“Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.”

HL Menken

To criticize the status quo is to invite volley after volley of personal criticism back in your own direction. I am sure this has likely been the case for a very long time, and I believe this may be partly due to the way in which humans learn through pattern recognition, as well as how the architecture of the human brain physically lays neural pathways to build understanding. Thus when an idea too astray from the usual is presented to the human mind, there is a high chance of a negative reaction because the new pattern is far too asymmetric for the current set of neural pathways to incorporate. That, or the derogator is a bored and obtuse malcontent with nothing better to do than shit all over other people on the internet.

I often write about the exploitation inherent in the model of civilization itself, and how this organizing framework which is dominant on the planet now is entirely unsustainable and will necessarily collapse catastrophically. This is some level nine stuff. By this I mean that if you have not been initiated, if you haven’t read about this topic or all of the feeder topics that lead to this conclusion, it would likely seem extreme. Thorough understanding of an issue requires prerequisite knowledge. We get to where we are by having been where we were, even philosophically and intellectually. Because my topics of critique often surround the civilization paradigm, its parts, and alternatives, I often receive flak from people which either demonstrates that they do not fully understand the gravity of the issues, or which merely indicts me as complicit in civilization’s crimes. The former generally comes in the form of people arguing that technology will remedy all of the converging crises faced and created by civilization. The latter is far more frustrating, as it is usually some pathetic attempt at a “got’chya!” moment where someone tries to defeat my greater thesis by pointing out my use of a computer or some other trapping of civilization. “Hypocrite!” they cry.

The hypocrisy claim is everywhere you find people critiquing any facet of the status quo. Antiwar activists who protested the Iraq war were called hypocrites for using gasoline. Occupy Wall Street participants were called hypocrites for using Apple products. My friends in forest defense have been called hypocrites for using paper. As an anti-civ anarchist I have been called a hypocrite for everything from having moved into a house during the winter, to having gone to the hospital when after forty hours of labor at home with a midwife, my partner was physically exhausted and wanted access to drugs so she could sleep. Every time these criticisms are leveled, it becomes a major energy suck to explain exactly how nonsensical they are. I would like to here dedicate this essay to shredding the “hypocrisy” argument once and for all, so it can forever be linked to by activists and social critics of all platforms and stripes, who neither have the time nor energy to swat at the many zombie hordes who become agitated when new ideas are presented to them which run counter to the comfortable patterns that they are used to, and who then proceed to scream “hypocrite!” in place of an actual counter argument.

—

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “Hell is other people.” Despite my anti-civ analysis, I am no misanthrope. Civilization is a system of organization, a power arrangement in which a small few control the many. Using their power, these few exploit the lands and beings around them so they can grow their power and comfort at the expense of others. Industrial civilization takes this paradigm full tilt and is wiping out habitat and species at a mortifying rate. Understanding this does not cause me to hate my species, but rather to be eager to help them understand why we must pursue new organizational methods. Still, the uphill battle of convincing fellow humans, especially those who are net beneficiaries of this destructive and exploitative set of arrangements, can be at times an infuriating engagement. Of course, this is not because I need people to immediately agree with me, but if they don’t, I do prefer they focus on challenging the content of my statements as opposed to nit picking the content of my life.

In “The Fall,” Albert Camus wrote, “Everyone insists on his innocence, at all costs, even if it means accusing the rest of the human race and heaven itself.” I believe that it may be this personal insistence on one’s innocence which leads people to quickly cry “hypocrite!” at those who critique the status quo. Because we are all mired in this paradigm, when it is critiqued, some individuals feel that the critique is of them individually, likely due to a personal identification with the system. Thus critiques become personal attacks against which they must defend themselves. “If the system is guilty, then I am guilty, and I’m not guilty!”

The need for personal innocence runs deeper. If a critique against an overarching paradigm such as a government, capitalism, or civilization itself seems irrefutable, this can invoke in some a certain need to then utilize this new information as part of their own personal ethos. The problem here, is that this will mean that person will feel compelled to act accordingly with this information, and the actions required may seem difficult, uncomfortable, or frightening. For instance, if you’re told that capitalism is exploitative because employers retain the surplus labor value generated by their employees, and you happen to be a business owner, this new understanding will mean one of two things: either you rearrange the operating model of your business to fairly compensate your employees for their labor, effectively making them cooperative partners, or you change nothing but must go through life recognizing that you profit off of the exploitation of others. Here, your internal need to perceive yourself as innocent, or at least to believe yourself a good person, will run counter with your open acknowledgement that you exploit people for a living. What to do then to keep the ego in tact?

If the action required to fall in line with the new ethos created by accepting new information is too hard, too uncomfortable, or you just don’t want to do it, you must justify inaction. Justifying inaction will be achieved possibly by denying the veracity of the new information. Like most capitalists in this scenario, you could convince yourself that your entrepreneurial and risk taking spirit give you the right to take the surplus labor value generated by the people you employ indefinitely. Of course, the justifications are endless.

In some cases though, if the new information received cannot be deflected through argument or justification, and the need to preserve one’s picture of their innocence is too great, then calling into question the character or behavior of the information’s purveyor can also suffice. For instance, if an activist is working to halt fossil fuel extraction for the myriad reasons that such a halting would be beneficial, it can be difficult to disagree with this activist on a purely argumentative level. How could you? Deny climate change? Deny ozone killing trees? Deny the death and destruction from Alberta, to the Gulf of Mexico, to the Niger Delta? On an argumentative level, you’d be wrong every time. However, you could call into question the activist’s use of fossil fuels, thereby deflecting the conversation, and basically insinuating that, as Camus also wrote in The Fall, “We are all in the soup together.” Because hey, if we’re all guilty, then none of us are guilty, am I right?

In the fall of 2012, I was in Texas working with the Tar Sands Blockade using direct action tactics to shut down construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. On the side of a highway north of Nacogdoches, I sat with some friends as our comrades were perched on platforms fifty feet in the air with their support lines tied to heavy machinery, effectively making the machines unusable lest their operators not mind killing these young people. There were a surprising amount of supporters for rural east Texas, but of course, there were plenty of people who made sure we were aware of their disdain for us. One such person passed by, slowed down, and said “I bet you used a pick up truck to get that stuff out here.” In his mind, this was a real zinger. I replied, “Of course we did. Why wouldn’t we?”

There are a slew of reasons why this man’s comment contained zero validity as a critique of our action. For one, the gasoline we used did not come from that as of yet unfinished pipeline. Also, though I wouldn’t, I could claim to be against tar sands bitumen, but not conventional crude. But really the truth is that anti-extraction activists are making what economists would even defend as an intelligent bargain; using X amount of fossil fuels to prevent the extraction of a million times X. Of course I would use a tank of gasoline to prevent the daily extraction and transportation of hundreds of thousands of barrels of bitumen. Not only am I seeking a massive net gain for the ecology of the planet, I am also not using any more fossil fuels than I would have used had I gone to work that day anyway.

In the same vein, it is not hypocrisy to write a book about the ills of deforestation. Though it may be printed on paper, it has the potential to affect policy which will then lessen the total amount of deforestation. Not to mention, the loggers are going to log and the publishing company is going to publish. Using those resources to ultimately dismantle that destructive activity is actually the best use for them. So no, the person who posts on the internet about the ravages of mountain top removal coal mining or hydraulic fracturing for natural gas isn’t a hypocrite. They are cleverly utilizing the paradigm’s resources to expose its flaws to the light of scrutiny, in the hope that the consciences of people will be stirred to ultimately upend the paradigm itself. This is, in fact, the most ethical use of the resources generated by destructive industrial activity.

Using the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house is to be encouraged.

—

It feels ridiculous to even have to lay this out, but the “hypocrisy” barb is flung far too often and dismantled far too little. What’s worse, is that hypocrisy in this regard isn’t even being understood correctly. According to wikipedia:

“Hypocrisy is the state of falsely claiming to possess virtuous characteristics that one lacks. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie. Hypocrisy is not simply failing to practice those virtues that one preaches. Samuel Johnson made this point when he wrote about the misuse of the charge of “hypocrisy” in Rambler No. 14:
Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practice; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory, as a man may be confident of the advantages of a voyage, or a journey, without having courage or industry to undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others, those attempts which he neglects himself.

Thus, an alcoholic’s advocating temperance, for example, would not be considered an act of hypocrisy as long as the alcoholic made no pretense of sobriety.”

This being understood, we can unequivocally state that a forest defense activist who prints pamphlets about saving tracts of woodland is not a hypocrite, unless they also claim to never use any forest products. Sure, there is a reasonable expectation that people who see a social ill will do their best to avoid adding to that ill, but sometimes the requirements of society horseshoe people into activity even they do not appreciate because the alternative options are worse or non-existent. Of course, this is where detractors will still claim that if an activist wants to save the forests, that they should cease using anything made from trees because consumer demand is behind all economic activity. Ignoring the obvious benefits of the trade off between printing five hundred pamphlets to save five hundred acres of woodlands, I think further disemboweling of this notion about consumer choice activism is also necessary.

Derrick Jensen writes about how he got in an argument with a man who accused him of being just as responsible for deforestation as Weyerhaeuser because he used toilet paper:

“Here, once again, is the real story. Our self-assessed culpability for participating in the deathly system called civilization masks (and is a toxic mimic of) our infinitely greater sin. Sure, I use toilet paper. So what? That doesn’t make me as culpable as the CEO of Weyerhaeuser, and to think it does grants a great gift to those in power by getting the focus off them and onto us.

For what, then, are we culpable? Well, for something far greater than one person’s work as a technical writer and another’s as a busboy. Something far greater than my work writing books to be made of the pulped flesh of trees. Something far greater than using toilet paper or driving cars or living in homes made of formaldehyde-laden plywood. For all of those things we can be forgiven, because we did not create the system, and because our choices have been systematically eliminated (those in power kill the great runs of salmon, and then we feel guilty when we buy food at the grocery store? How dumb is that?). But we cannot and will not be forgiven for not breaking down the system that creates these problems, for not driving deforesters out of forests, for not driving polluters away from land and water and air, for not driving moneylenders from the temple that is our only home. We are culpable because we allow those in power to continue to destroy the planet. Yes, I know we are more or less constantly enjoined to use only inclusive rhetoric, but when will we all realize that war has already been declared upon the natural world, and upon all of us, and that this war has been declared by those in power? We must stop them with any means necessary. For not doing that we are infinitely more culpable than most of us—myself definitely included— will ever be able to comprehend.”

He continues:

“To be clear: I am not culpable for deforestation because I use toilet paper. I am culpable for deforestation because I use toilet paper and I do not keep up my end of the predator-prey bargain. If I consume the flesh of another I am responsible for the continuation of its community. If I use toilet paper, or any other wood or paper products, it is my responsibility to use any means necessary to ensure the continued health of natural forest communities. It is my responsibility to use any means necessary to stop industrial forestry.”

I believe it is dangerous to convince people that their only power is in their purchasing decisions, because this relegates people to being mere consumers, not active citizens, let alone autonomous beings who define their own struggles, explore a diversity of tactics, and experiment to find new and effective measures for countering power. It also reduces all of society to nothing but customer transactions. Doing so ignores the power people have to protest, blockade, persuade, legislate, and sometimes, to overthrow. Would advocates of consumer choice activism stand by the idea that American revolutionaries should merely have boycotted tea, stamps and British products? Would they advocate that these revolutionaries should have instead of smashing windows, burning buildings, and fighting back against the crown have instead started their own competing tea trading companies? How about American slavery? Was the real solution that abolitionists and free blacks should have started competing fiber plantations in the north, hoping to push slave produced cotton out of business? Should we brand Captain John Brown a hypocrite for not wearing fair trade worker owned flax linen pants when he raided Harper’s Ferry seeking weapons with which to start a slave revolt? Preposterous!

Fighting against a behemoth industry that is interwoven into the state apparatus and has insulated itself as a central pillar of day to day operations is not something easily done. For one to claim they know exactly how to win such a fight is audacious. When it comes to the extraction industries, there is a large buffer where no matter how much the public cuts their consumption, the state will offset their financial losses through subsidies and purchases. The US government will happily buy discount oil for the fifth armored division after a civilian boycott lowers the price. Because of this, all forms of resistance are welcome and necessary, and it should be understood that attacking such a monolithic industry requires people hammering away, figuratively and literally, on every possible front. If it takes two million barrels of oil to power the cars and trucks necessary to organize the ten thousand strong blockade that cripples the refinery complex at the Port of Houston, well hell, oil well spent.

—

Those who demand lifestyle purity of anyone who ever raises a critique of any facet of the status quo are creating a double bind paradigm of hypocrites and extremists so to establish two camps into which they can then package critics in order to isolate and ignore them. The hypocrite camp is obvious. By misdiagnosing via a false definition someone who is against civilization as a hypocrite because they use electricity to write their thoughts online, these detractors can in their own minds, suggest there is no reason to take the critique seriously. But suppose the anti-civ critic did achieve lifestyle purity. Suppose that they lived in a wigwam in the woods that they constructed themselves from branches and deer hides. Imagine that this person walked to the center of town every weekend in haggard clothing they had pulled from thrift store dumpsters and then this person stood on a bench to shout about the ills of industry and hierarchy. Is it likely that this person would be taken seriously? Of course not! They would be labeled an extremist. Passersby would write this person off as insane before listening to argument one. There is no middle ground in this double bind, and that is the point. Those who would cry from the wilderness about the death and the misery that civilization brings will forever be stripping more and more from their lives in a futile effort to gain recognition, to be valid in the eyes of those who called them hypocrites, until one day they are branded as lunatics, if they are not unheard and unseen, exactly as their detractors want them to be.

On this, we should remember too, that there are people who have achieved this lifestyle purity. They are the tribal peoples around the world who never have been drawn into the net of civilization. They are the global poor who do not benefit from the burning of coal or the sinking of copper mines. And their voices consistently go unheard. In fact, their voices are almost ubiquitously silenced. What do the defenders of the status quo say to the Kayapó, Arara, Juruna, Araweté, Xikrin, Asurini and Parakanã peoples who are fighting the construction of the Belo Monte dam which threatens their survival? What do the defenders of the status quo say to the animals and plants who have been nothing but victims in the story of human progress? There is no inconsistency in their lives. No iPhone to scoff at, no power tool, no window fan. What is the excuse for denying their right to live? What is the excuse for exterminating them and pretending it isn’t happening? Why is it OK to deny their pleas?

Analysis and critique precede action. Without first understanding a system and describing its flaws, it will never be repaired or replaced. To assert that one must excise themselves from a system prior to criticizing it is asinine, especially so when the system being criticized is a global power structure with tentacles in almost every geographical region. Such assertions if considered legitimate would render critique impossible. They are also so implausible as to essentially be nothing more than a dismissal of critique, a backhanded way of saying “Shut up!” To be sure, the horrors of the dominant culture always have required a silencing of those it would make victims, so such behaviors amongst the denizens of civilization should come as no surprise, but they have never been and will never be intellectually or academically valid.

If you are in a prison, eating the food from the cafeteria does not mean you accept being a prisoner. Likewise, if you are a prisoner and you detest the prison and the system that put you there with every fiber of your being, you are not a hypocrite for allowing the prison doctor to treat you. Navigating life in a system of dominance, violence, and control is difficult and miserable, and if you have any designs to resist, whether to organize others on the inside with you to demand improvement of conditions, or to dig a tunnel and to escape, staying well fed and healthy in the mean time will be necessary for your success. While you fight, while you resist, use what you must to survive, especially in light of the fact that not doing so will not bring down the walls around you.

—

With the ever worsening issue of climate change, on top of the issues of political rot, net energy decline, and economic sclerosis, there will be more and more critique and analysis of exactly how societies are breaking down and what people should do in response. With this will come wave after wave of nonsense rebuttal to muddy the waters. At least when the defense of the status quo defers to indicting the behavior of the critics themselves, we can likely presume that their critiques are probably accurate, or at least that the status quo defender has no legitimate argument. For if the detractor had a legitimate counter analysis, they would present it. Attacking the messenger is behavior of the beaten. If I say “we need to abolish fossil fuels because they cause too much ecological damage” and someone responds “but you use gas in your chainsaw,” they have not displayed that my statement is untrue. In fact, there is a tacit admission that what I am saying is true, they just want to drag me down into the muck as if I’m not already standing in it.

Yes, I am knee deep in the shit of global industrial capitalist civilization. Yes, circumstances have me dancing from rock to rock, trying to avoid participating in the destructive protocols of the dominant culture, and obliging to where it makes strategic sense to do so. Most people understand this. Most people understand the nuance between having and living an ethic in a complex world which leaves little to our individual control. Those who would deny this reality in order to deny your point are a nuisance at most. Hell is not other people, just other people in the comments section on the internet.

235 thoughts on “Let’s Get Critical”

Also, I have just removed an article from Wiki How, simply because they removed my self-explanatory video for the fifth time.: poor little darlings need spoken words as well as written explanation, apparently. Collapse follows when stupidity reaches critical mass.

Thank you for hosting this essay Mike. for those of us who have been in the thick of it for many years there is nothing new, but for newcomers to these ideas I’m sure there will be much food for thought.

About 7 years ago I had a discussion with Harry Do-nothing (Duynhoven), then associate minister for looting the commons on behalf of the Crown. I suggested a number of things that needed to be done ( including leaving coal in the ground) His response was that he could not do anything ‘extreme’.

My counter response to him was (and still would be if he were around): “harry, what is more extreme than destroying your own children’s future?”

The ‘Orcs’ have been very clever and very successful in their dumbing down of the general populace to the point that most people are incapable of rational thought and believe whatever garbage is delivered to them via their televisions and radios etc.

Your counter-response, i can answer. The thing which is more extreme than destroying his children’s future – is destroying his and his children’s present. This is quite logical, right?

Alas, i am not saying that keeping all the coal in the ground would certainly destroy his and his children’s future – please bear with me, it’s a fine distinction, – all i am saying is that it may well be so – but we don’t know for sure.

Yet i can easily see how Harry could lose more than just his job position IF he’d do what you asked him to do. UK nowadays burns something like 1 quadrillion BTU of coal, and this is BIG money. Some folks would be so upsed about losing it that mr. Harry could well lose his life in response. His children’s present would likely be ruined, if not completely destroyed.

No?

As for “then what can we do” thing, – using more subtle things seems to be the only method. Instead of making _decisions_ to keep coal in the ground, – create conditions in which nobody – no person, no company, – would want to extract coal out of the ground. And create such conditions using _other_ reasons, too. Like, contact people in government who wouldn’t mind to earn extra buck (or few billions of) in fines for environmental pollution, and propose some smart ways to take such fines without creating much trouble for the person (nor the government the person serves in). Don’t tell them you want to prevent coal extraction, – tell them you want to do business with them, and have some ideas they might find interesting. Something like this, but certainly much more advanced and detailed, to account for all the circumstances and realities.

I should have noted that I am in NZ and the coal was to be extracted largely for export to China, so they could carry on making crap that NZ imports in exchange for the money obtained by selling the coal.

Not too long after that conversation 29 NZ coal miners lost their lives in an underground explosion, almost certainly resulting form the negligence and cost-cutting of a corporation.

Senior politicians in both parties have become so intoxicated by the idea of an American surge in energy production that they have lost their senses.

Michael T. Klare

[begins]

Of all the preposterous, irresponsible headlines that have appeared on the front page of The New York Times in recent years, few have exceeded the inanity of this one from early March: “US Hopes Boom in Natural Gas Can Curb Putin.” The article by normally reliable reporters Coral Davenport and Steven Erlanger suggested that, by sending our surplus natural gas to Europe and Ukraine in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the United States could help reduce the region’s heavy reliance on Russian gas and thereby stiffen its resistance to Vladimir Putin’s aggressive behavior.

Forget that the United States currently lacks the capacity to export LNG to Europe, and will not be able to do so on a significant scale until the 2020s. Forget that Ukraine lacks any LNG receiving facilities and is unlikely to acquire any, as its only coastline is on the Black Sea, in areas dominated by Russian speakers with loyalties to Moscow. Forget as well that any future US exports will be funneled into the international marketplace, and so will favor sales to Asia where gas prices are 50 percent higher than in Europe. Just focus on the article’s central reportorial flaw: it fails to identify a single reason why future American LNG exports (which could wind up anywhere) would have any influence whatsoever on the Russian president’s behavior.

The only way to understand the strangeness of this is to assume that the editors of the Times, like senior politicians in both parties, have become so intoxicated by the idea of an American surge in oil and gas production that they have lost their senses.

As domestic output of oil and gas has increased in recent years—largely through the use of fracking to exploit hitherto impenetrable shale deposits—many policymakers have concluded that the United States is better positioned to throw its weight around in the world. “Increasing US energy supplies,” said then-presidential security adviser Tom Donilon in April 2013, “affords us a stronger hand in pursuing and implementing our international security goals.” Leaders in Congress on both sides of the aisle have voiced similar views.

The impression one gets from all this balderdash is that increased oil and gas output—like an extra dose of testosterone—will somehow bolster the will and confidence of American officials when confronting their foreign counterparts. One former White House official cited by Davenport and Erlanger caught the mood of the moment perfectly: “We’re engaging from a different position [with respect to Russia] because we’re a much larger energy producer.”

It should be obvious to anyone who has followed recent events in the Crimea and Ukraine that increased US oil and gas output have provided White House officials with no particular advantage in their efforts to counter Putin’s aggressive moves—and that the prospect of future US gas exports to Europe is unlikely to alter his strategic calculations. It seems, however, that senior US officials beguiled by the mesmerizing image of a future “Saudi America” have simply lost touch with reality.

For anyone familiar with addictive behavior, this sort of delusional thinking would be a sign of an advanced stage of fossil fuel addiction. As the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality evaporates, the addict persists in the belief that relief for all problems lies just ahead—when, in fact, the very opposite is true. [there’s more]

Oxygen depletion in the Baltic Sea is 10 times worse than a century ago

[a few selected quotes]

After several years of discussions, researchers from Aarhus University (Denmark), Lund University (Sweden) and Stockholm University (Sweden) have determined that nutrients from the land are the main cause of widespread areas of oxygen depletion. The results were published on 31 March in the prestigious American journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

During the last twenty years, climate change has also played a role in the poor oxygen situation. Warmer conditions reduce the solubility of oxygen from the atmosphere and increase oxygen consumption because the biological respiration processes are boosted.

Studies show that it takes decades before benthic fauna once more return to a dead seabed when the oxygen conditions improve.

It takes a very special individual to commit your entire life to serving the homeless.

But that is exactly what Pastor Dan Catlin and his wife Linda have been doing for many years.

The following is an excerpt from a profile of the Messiah’s Branch homeless ministry in Wichita, Kansas that was written by Jessiqua Wittman…

Messiah’s Branch is a family-owned homeless ministry. Since the year 2000, Dan and Linda Catlin have been traveling an hour, at least twice a week, to help the homeless in the city of Wichita, Kansas.

When I was a teenager (before we were homeless ourselves), my family had the privilege of working with this family.

We’d arrive at the mission building (a renovated bar), around 12:30 on Tuesdays and Fridays. The homeless people of the city, usually about 50 to 70 of them, would already be trickling into the area. There are a lot more homeless people than that in Wichita. Those were just the people from the surrounding area that could walk there, and had no other ministry that they could go for food. Most churches (besides Messiah’s Branch) require identification before they feed people off the street, and oftentimes homeless people have lost their identification long ago, whether because of drugs, mugging, or police raids (many of the police in Wichita are very hostile towards homeless people).

When you serve the homeless, there are no vacations. It is just a relentless battle against human pain and suffering. To do this year after year, you have got to be driven by compassion…

Sister Linda can hold a knife and cut a potato at the same time, in the same hand! The whole time seasoning her stew and chatting and laughing with a young homeless couple that are hanging around the kitchen door, hungry for more than just food.

And Pastor Dan? What does he do? He takes some people to doctor’s appointments, some to the hospital. Sometimes he buys shoes, or makes sure they find a coat that will fit just right. The way I remember him most is being the resident jar-opener.

In the wintertime, when it reaches a certain temperature, Pastor Dan and Sister Linda open up the building full time. There are so many people that come, they lay them all side-by-side in rows on the floor. For a week sometimes, it’s like this.

I have personally talked to Pastor Dan and I know how hard he has worked to help the homeless of Wichita for so many years.

But the need just keeps getting greater.

All over the country, the middle class is shrinking and more people are falling into poverty.

We are going to need a lot more people like the ones you just read about above.

And you don’t have to do exactly what they are doing. Find your own way to make a difference. We all have different gifts, and together we can make this country a better place.

Kevin Hayden is one of the originals, and a helluva nice guy – maybe too nice. Always taking care of other people, and working to be a good son and father. (I’ve written about him before.)

Now he’s in jail and had to make bail for driving uninsured. They’ve taken his truck. (The truck he used to drive his sick daughter to the doctor’s, because they live in the middle of nowhere.)

Kevin is a living, breathing example of how it’s one thing after another in the life of the poor, and the cascading effect thereof. I’ve known him for years and still can’t believe his ongoing run of bad luck.

I agree that the “hypocrisy” label is misplaced. My usual response is, “you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs”. That said, I think there is a sentiment that underlies that accusation which has some validity. When I was at a mountaintop coal mine shutdown, we were met with counterdemonstrators. One of them had a sign that read, “Don’t like electricity? Light a candle.”

So here’s the problem, let’s take Dereck Jensen’s toilet paper example which can stand in for any number of industrial processes. There is no way to provide sufficient toilet paper – and food, clothing, heat and light – for 7 billion (and counting) people on the earth without industrial mining, manufacture, agriculture, fishing, shipping etc.

NO. WAY.

So all this raging against the “system” might feel good and righteous, but there is nothing to replace it that would function for so many people. None. Even the poorest people with the lowest carbon footprint, by and large, live in cities that import food from industrial agriculture.

So what you are left with, after all the fulminating against capitalism, is that a lot of people have to be eliminated somehow. Which will happen, but not voluntarily. And for sure, the earth will be completely ravaged – all the animals down to worms and cockroaches will be eaten, and all the trees will be burnt – before the last human is finished.

Gail,
This argument of overpopulation would perhaps be the ultimate illustration of the “double bind paradigm”. That is to say that since the world is in extreme ecological overshoot, there is no alternative to feed all of those humans except with industrial agriculture.

Certainly there are ways to change the system that would not result in mass starvation while also planning for a gradual, managed decline in global population. For one example, look at the amount of food that is wasted in America:

Oh certainly. We don’t, theoretically, have to waste and squander resources. There is much that could, in theory, be done. The problem is, it won’t be. This: “…planning for a gradual, managed decline in global population” is never going to happen. There will be an unplanned, rapid unmanaged decline however.

The question (since this is set in stone) is, why is this? Why are people so stupid? Is it because we are brainwashed by the culture of capitalism and industrial civilization.

Or is it because we can’t help ourselves, because it embedded in our nature to grow our population until we come up against immutable restraints?

Personally, I think the verdict is in. It’s in our past, and in our present.

I sympathize with that view; we have long since passed the limits of a globally sustainable population. The question now really is wether we will simply let things unfold in disaster, or find a way down from our predicament without burning down the entire house. Despite evidence of predetermined nature, the conscientious among us will die trying to affect a different outcome.

That sounds almost melodramatic! Do you mean you wil die to affect a different outcome…or you’ll keep trying until you die? And what constitutes “trying”? Because if it’s informing John Q. Public about the dangers of climate change, you may as not bother:

There’s nothing melodramatic about facing reality, but there’s a lot of melodrama involved in denying it. Those trying to effect change are confronting the reality of industrial civ’s unsustainablity. Those relinquishing themselves to fatalistic thinking are joining the ranks of the delusional.

It’s impossible to answer these questions definitively. Lots of alternative theories have been propounded on this blog with a variety of arguments from all quarters ranging from vehement to snide to accommodating. The verdict is in? Maybe, maybe not. We can each judge when enough is known to assess the situation fully, but then some new piece or interpretation appears.

The author of this blog post (TD0S) says he’s not a misanthrope and recognizes that we’re all channeled irresistibly toward the deleterious behaviors that characterize participation in modern industrial civilization, namely, profligate consumption and exploitation. (Some resist with greater principle than others.) You add overpopulation (a basic biological urge), which has been addressed numerous times in the last 50 years but ineffectively in the last analysis. Others say we’re the equivalent of locusts, or cancer, or bacteria, or information systems run amok. Really, take your pick. They’re all true because the problem is really a complex of problems.

The reason why I’m a misanthrope and don’t excuse our behaviors as merely part of our programming or received culture is that when the big picture has come into view again and again throughout history people have made active choices to continue to exploit and consume for power and profit. We know we’re doing it, we won’t stop, but we could have arrested things at multiple points in our history had we demonstrated the character to face the foreseeable effects. We’ve now reached the point in this crisis millennia in the making that we’re locked into our fate because of delayed feedbacks. We’ve passed all the branching points that would have allowed us to forestall disaster, and we’ve chosen that course again and again.

Admittedly, the bulk of the population is entirely ignorant of this, which is why we have specialists and leaders to do what’s necessary to assess and lead. However, just like we failed ourselves, our institutions have also failed because we chose again and again to create or allow perverse incentives to hollow out leadership to the point that none possess the combination of power and character to act responsibly. Some still have expertise, some still have power, but they don’t combine anymore. Kevin Moore has been very clear that even when armed with the facts gathered by experts, those in power choose and lead badly again and again.

Following the most egregiously inhumane institutional activities of the 20th century, we sought retribution from those who orchestrated mayhem and disaster. No doubt many of the decision-makers got away with their skins, but my sense of justice demands that people be brought to task for their crimes. Occupy was an incipient example of shaming those (on Wall Street) who embody the worst of 21st-century financial crimes. There’s still plenty of work to be done exposing the extent of how awful are ongoing decisions to perpetuate BAU, undertaken with either the full knowledge of their effects or rank incompetence. Either way, it’s criminal negligence.

Mike, using food that’s wasted to feed people merely kicks the can down the road, and ensuring an even greater population and thus an even greater population crash as we distribute food more efficiently. It’s analogous to Jevon’s paradox, from what I can see.

Population is THE cause of all of our current ills, yet it’s the one thing no one wants to address seriously. It’s become the “third rail” for some reason unclear to me, since I remember it being talked about with great pragmatism in the 1970s.

There is no route out for the collective masses at this point. But you know what? Collectively people – particularly the affluent and developed nation populations – chose that outcome by ignoring decades of warnings.

It’s still possible for people to do something – some people at least – and again – it’s all about choices. Do I mean they can save the billions alive today? No, of course not. But we can still do things that have value and that might benefit our species into the future.

UPS, one of the world’s largest shipping and logistics companies, has decided to fire 250 workers who staged a 90-minute protest in February. The protest was organized after a long-time employee was fired over an hours dispute.

Twenty of the workers were notified of their dismissal on Monday. The remaining 230 were told they would be fired as soon as replacements are trained.

The workers, who are based in Queens, N.Y., walked off the job when Jairo Reyes, a 24-year company veteran and union activist, got in a dispute with the company over the number of hours senior staff could work, according to the New York Daily News.

Reyes was fired on February 14 — “that was my Valentine’s Day gift from UPS,” Reyes told the Queens Courrier — and the ensuing protest occurred February 26.

A UPS spokesperson confirmed the firing to the Huffington Post, referring to the protest as “an unauthorized work stoppage.”

“We simply cannot allow employee misconduct that jeopardizes our ability to reliably serve our customers and maintain order in our delivery operations,” UPS spokesperson Steve Gaut wrote in an email to HuffPost. “For this reason, the company is releasing employees involved in the work stoppage.”

The Queens workers are represented by the local branch of the Teamsters union. In a statement on their website, they describe the firings as “arbitrary discipline.”

“UPS’s actions this week were a heartless attack on drivers and their families,” the Teamsters Local 804 wrote.

Local officials and union representatives have demanded that UPS rehire the workers and that the city revoke the millions in New York government contracts currently awarded to the company.

UPS also “receives millions of dollars every year in reduced fine and fees for parking tickets,” according to NYC Public Advocate Letitia James, who will protest alongside the Teamsters at New York City Hall Thursday.

Many of the early settlers were simply greedy opportunists, but some had the vision of creating a better version of England. A tiny remnant of that social awareness still remains, NZ having not been opened up for rampant raping by global corporations until the 1980s by the treacherous ‘Labour’ government of the time.

The propaganda value of items such the one below is immense in maintaining the consensus trance which is leading us into utter catastrophe. On the other hand, I have not been shot yet, so there must be something in it.

New Zealanders live in the most socially advanced country in the world, a United States survey says.

Despite having just the 25th highest gross domestic product per capita in the world, New Zealand is a world leader in terms of opportunity, safety, personal freedom and lack of corruption among other qualities, the Social Progress Index says.

The survey of 132 countries by the Social Progress Imperative, a non-profit organisation based in the US, measures three main categories: basic human needs, the foundations of wellbeing and opportunity. Each was divided into four sections.

It puts New Zealand at the top of 132 countries surveyed, ahead of Switzerland, Iceland, the Netherlands and Norway.

New Zealand was rated the best in the world in terms of opportunity, which measures personal rights, personal freedom of choice, access to advanced education, tolerance and inclusion.

It was sixth in the foundations of wellbeing, which measures access to basic knowledge, access to information, health and wellness and ecosystem sustainability.

The biggest drag on this for New Zealand was the obesity rate, which was 115th out of the 132 countries.

New Zealand’s lowest rank was in terms of basic human needs, where it was 16th.

In this area it was still best in the world in terms of access to piped water, low homicide rate and low political terror, but it was held back by being 50th in terms of affordable housing.

The rest of the top 10 was made up of north European countries, Canada, and Australia, which ranked 10th. The United Kingdom was 13th, the United States 16th, Russia 80th and China 90th

I loved your two recent essays, so very glad to see you are contributing here. I look forward to reading your earlier essays on your site now that you are among my bookmarks.

Ever since reading Endgame a few years ago, I’ve struggled with how to reconcile my intense desire to resist with my utter terror of the security state. Perhaps it is my own personal history that has shaped me, I have too much experience being subject to malicious coercive power. I don’t have a problem admitting my cowardice, but it means my resistance is mostly the consumer kind, saying ‘no’ to anything that isn’t essential for my existence. Usually that is relatively easy as I have more or less chosen a life of poverty so I can’t consume much anyway. (My old monitor broke down a while back so I was forced into a Luddite holiday until I could afford a new one, extremely good for my nonexistent soul to have less screen time lol. I celebrated my reconnection to the drug of the internets by spending a day catching up on things here, always a pleasure as well as a rebaptism into the Hell of awareness.)

I also realized almost two decades ago that real american middle class life, which has become just a slightly higher level of poverty, when I have experimented with it, was more like a living death, eventually requiring addictions and pills and other coping mechanisms that only make things worse. At least as I have observed among my friends and coworkers over time. Better the relative freedom of poverty than that, and no regrets on that score.

But being a member of the precariat means my life has few options for actions that actually matter. Like most americans today, I have no safety net, social or financial, no cave or family to return to in order to recuperate and replenish anything lost to risky action. Even living by all the rules of the mainstream open prison I live in with ‘normal’ people, almost anything could knock me down into homelessness and hunger. I’ve experienced both in the past and that too has shaped my ability to imagine resistance and forced me to recognize my severely limited reserves of courage and resilience. When all you can think of is finding something to eat and staying clear of human predators, cold and rain, there is nothing left over for moments of higher thinking, strategy, planning, whatever. Those types of experiences form very deep grooves in the brain and body memory systems, vivid to this day. My fear of anything similar is very deep. I had to be rescued at that time, and I was lucky. Few people can save themselves on their own, completely contrary to the american myth of bootstrapping and individual responsibility/fault that only gets more powerful even as people become more enslaved, isolated, and abandoned. (Check out this very sobering read, http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Short-Working-Class-Adulthood-Uncertainty/dp/0199931461.)

Another great source of my doubt about taking action: I no longer adhere to the faith-based assumption that most people with the right information will make the right choices. Especially in this culture, where the need for individual innocence usually trumps any ethical wrestling that calls for transformation. Certain cultural norms shape and create certain kinds of individuals, at least along a bell curve. Capitalism selects for certain human traits, and does so over generations. Americans will likely choose accusations of hypocrisy and ridicule (and violence) rather than reflection or change because that is the kind of people our society has created for a long time. Thus, the continuing calls for ‘joining’ others and ‘forming community’ on the part of activists often feel like religious exhortations that ignore social realities. Where would you find the others with whom to join, and aren’t they just as damaged and enmeshed in a system of slavery as you are? And the lifestyle fanatics seem to me to play the same hypocrisy/innocence game as the SUV driving shopping addicts, so not exactly the kind of social movement that offers much hope, just opportunities for a bit of self righteous social grooming and preening. (Vegans or frat-boy Young Republicans, which is worse to actually be around lol? The pox on both their houses.)

As depressing as it was to consider, my friends who were active in OWS in NY and Oakland told me there were plenty of people there who mostly just wanted their piece of the pie, not much more than that, certainly nothing too revolutionary. I want to believe otherwise, but that in itself allows for the danger of distortion. Pessimism is more accurate, its just so painful to sustain when a person is desperate for signs of something good. But why shouldn’t it be the case that many of those forced to the margins just want what they see others already have, rather than a change in the system itself? That is as fundamental to capitalism as anything, it takes a LOT to resist that kind of pressure and it never stops needing active resistance. OWS was rather incredible, inspiring, important, but I’m not sure it represents any mass consciousness against capitalism, except among a minority. Maybe for many it was a loud demand to be let INTO the club, rather than a rejection of the club and its exclusionary rules. Even if there were mass seeds of doubt planted and at least germinated, what next next? Where within people formed by capitalism are there nutrients to nourish seedlings of something else? And at what cost?

This capitalist selection process and identity creation is still ongoing around the world, like the spread of a viral infection. I recently went to hear Katherine Boo speak about her book on the slums of Bombay. While she never used the word capitalism, what she was describing is that selection process: of weeding out who will survive by treachery, usury, creative corruption, exploitation, competition, whatever it takes in a truly desperate environment. She told the haunting story of a boy who refused to capture and sell some beautiful birds that lived in one of the few trees surviving in the toxic wasteland of the slum, even though it would have meant money for a bit of food, for at least a few days, and knowing someone else would capture them anyway. He felt that there was so little beauty around them that they were worth preserving. Boo was careful to point out that this was not really a story of resilience, but the story of a loser, one who will not make it in the environment in which he lives over time (unless he adapts of course).

She has gotten a lot of flack for describing how ruthless people in the slum are forced to become and ignoring all the social movements of resistance that others have described in discussions of similar environments. When asked about this, she says clearly that she looked for them, expected to find them, wanted to find them, but was shocked to find very little evidence for them overall. Sobering, not what we want to hear. I admit I personally was apprehensive about going to the reading, dreading another white wealthy person’s memoir of picturesque poverty, but it gave me a lot to think about; it was brave in the sense that it resisted a narrative that gives hope to privileged outsiders that these ‘resilient’ people are ‘finding a way’, offering instead a much more difficult story. I spent time in India (the second most difficult place I’ve ever encountered, Brazil was tops and for similar reasons) and Boo’s stories reminded me of what I heard on the ground there from people involved in various Dalit right’s groups. The capitalist selection process grinds through families and communities relentlessly, even individuals, producing schizo behavior as people struggle to survive desperate inequality and instability.

Nicole Foss’ latest is definitely worth a read. Imagine the selection process going on in these last areas of the commons on the globe, mostly in Africa. Who will win? Who will lose? It will break up families, communities, countries, in places that have been under assault already for a very long time. http://www.theautomaticearth.com/nicole-foss-finance-and-food-insecurity/

I think we (the West in a broad sense) have gone too far down a particular path to have any real chance at forming the kinds of progressive social movements that might have altered our future, because the kinds of individuals who would bring them into being are no longer sufficiently brought into being. The social movements that do seem to rise in our country (as well as the other advanced industrial nations) are the fascist kinds. Joining a group based on blame, purity, and the Wars that Give Meaning (Hedges) has a bright future. And not just among the masses or the religious or the militantly ignorant. The whole phenomenon of the Dark Enlightenment is really shocking. Even among what could be called intellectuals, it is the Right that seems to be at the vanguard and full of creative energy, rather than the Left. (I do think postmodern analyses and many of the other post-post-modern trends do have some value, but the nihilist-leaning Left seems just as weak as the Left overall.)

The mystery and horror of why this is so fosters major handwringing and turgid analysis, but it continues nonetheless. To me, I suspect again that it is because the broader social contexts in which we live have created individuals at all levels of our societies that are far more likely to find refuge in fascism as an alternative to the nightmare of what we have now. Fascism may very well offer a qualitatively superior lived experience in some ways than capitalism and for more people, as long as you are lucky enough to be a member of the ‘in’ group at the right time. I recently read some of Lieven de Cauter’s work at the bookstore, his ideas on Entropic Empire and Capsular Civilization are very thought provoking. Fascism (aka as emerging structures of capitalism) might look a lot different than earlier forms, be more dispersed, technology allowing for different ways of human concentration, control and disposal. For those on the inside, it may very well be quite a good life. Its all horrifyingly plausible, far more than any positive global action on climate change. I thought xray’s “We’ve Got It All Under Control” was spot on and more likely than most scenarios one reads about the near future.

We are social obligate mammals, we will drift towards a social experience out of fundamental need, even if what on offer is toxic and degraded in the long run, individually and collectively. (Anybody read A General Theory of Love? A lovely little book but also cautionary in its implications.) We have lost the foundations, as Putnam describes, that are perhaps necessary to create the possibility of something like the non-elitist/leftist/emancipatory movements of the last century. We just can’t get there from where we are now because those kinds of people are mostly extinct and no longer ‘in production’. The Dalai Lama has said that people get the political leaders they deserve (a corrective to claims of citizen innocence for reprehensible national actions), and perhaps we get the prophets we deserve as well, an even more terrifying thought. But not new; Kershaw has persuasively argued that Germany yearned for a Hitler. Even if most americans now are drugged exhausted addicted zombies, clearly there is yearning for something else, something socially satisfying. We can already see a lot of what that looks like; I personally prefer isolation to most of those repulsive options. (Anybody read The Circle by Eggers? Not really successful as a convincing novel but incredibly spooky in its description of the techie utopians; I know people who would read the book and think its a wonderful tale of the future instead of a horror story.)

All of this seems so hopeless, yet there are still those along the margins of the bell curve who continue to resist in risky and even substantial ways. They came into being in the same culture of mass delusion, anomie and alienation. How does that happen? Is it always a matter of personal history, or are there commonalities? (I think of Derrick Jensen as a green prophet, the very kind we need, and his personal story is certainly riveting and instructive and I hope he inspires many who are braver than me.) Why do you td0s resist as you do? Why does xray create this blog and why do we hang out here? Why does Kevin keep up the struggle in NZ? I bet those security agencies whose job it is to exterminate even the tiny pockets of resistance (including blogs it seems) that exist are asking that very question. Terrifying, really. If anyone will figure out what combination of social conditions/brain states/environments/etc. create skeptical–let alone rebellious–individuals and groups, it will be the scientists, philosophers, academics, strategists and policy makers who aim to eliminate those opportunities. Happy TED talks will hide the darker side of all that research, but that is the motivation that will fund what I’m sure will be fascinating novel insights into our nature and its flexibilities. (Having been reading Margulis this last month, I think if there is an organism among our microbiota that shapes humans resistant to capitalism, I’m sure they will find it and create an antibiotic against it lol.)

I’m glad to still have heroes who are far more courageous than I am, even if doom and failure seems overwhelmingly likely. Especially in this country, they seem like miracles or aliens. I still have hopes that in less damaged societies, there will be more of a foundation for bigger social movements of resistance, ones that aren’t so overwhelmingly fascist in their tendencies. If the Empire is weakened enough by its own hubris and the crumbling of its Ponzi schemes, perhaps there will be space for the weapons of the weak (Scott) to scale up. Perhaps I’m only admitting that I’m old fashioned, in the sense that rather than a faith in technology, my faith–definitely based on mostly unseen evidence and pure hopium lol–is that in other cultures and societies, there are still enough socially intelligent/skilled people who will choose difficult transformation rather than innocence, perhaps fostering the rise of charismatic leaders (if flawed as they always are), practical ideologies (also flawed of course), larger social movements that aren’t fascist but still Promethean (horrors!) and Big Picture. It may not change our global trajectory or catastrophic climate change in the end, but I’m not so misanthropic that I don’t find some comfort that such a scenario would still give meaning to many people’s lives. Any generation anywhere that escapes the american way of life before the end of humanity as we’ve known it is a Fuck You to this empire of death and thus a good thing.

I am also reading a book about 1945 and the Allied victory in WW2. It is called “Year Zero”. In it, the author describes the situation in Germany, about how the defeated general population was murderously furious about having been duped and played for fools by the incompetent Fascists. An American officer wrote that it would have been better to stay on the outside of the cities and let the general population mete out their revenge on the Fascists.

In other words, we have been down the fascist road before, and to follow the siren’s song again will just make matters that much more horrific. Guess how I am betting on that particular question?

The “left” as you mention has never, apparently, substantially, considered (starting small) so to speak; creating a working model of what they, we are talking about. Something like the Hutterites for example.

Sustainability, peace and robust health are all very easy to manifest. All that has to be done is do away with usury, the military, junk food and control procreation…… how soon do we think these will be constitutional amendments? Ha, never of course; not in our lifetimes.

And besides, because these things couldn’t be enforced anyway, they would have to be adopted voluntarily. Apparently the “left” thinks (living these values) means individually in one’s head. To this I guess I would say the (ignorant masses?) need to SEE something different not just HEAR different.

The public health danger from the escape, from laboratories, of viruses capable of causing pandemics has become the subject of considerable, well-merited discussion, spurred by “gain of function” experiments. The ostensible goal of these experiments— in which researchers manipulate already-dangerous pathogens to create or increase communicability among humans—is to develop tools to monitor the natural emergence of pandemic strains. Opponents, however, warn that the risk of laboratory escape of these high-consequence pathogens far outweighs any potential advance. These arguments appear in a variety of recent research papers, including Rethinking Biosafety in Research on Potential Pandemic Pathogens; The Human Fatality and Economic Burden of a Man-made Influenza Pandemic: A Risk Assessment; Containing the Accidental Laboratory Escape of Potential Pandemic Influenza Viruses; and Response to Letter by the European Society for Virology on “Gain-of-Function” Influenza Research. [good read]

[selected quote]

Dangerous themes.

These narratives of escaped pathogens have common themes. There are unrecognized technical flaws in standard bio-containment, as demonstrated in the UK smallpox and FMD cases. Inadequately inactivated preparations of dangerous pathogens are handled in laboratory areas with reduced biosecurity levels, as demonstrated in the SARS and VEE escapes. The first infection, or index case, happens in a person not working directly with the pathogen that infects him or her, as in the smallpox and SARS escapes. Poor training of personnel and slack oversight of laboratory procedures negate policy efforts by national and international bodies to achieve biosecurity, as shown in the SARS and smallpox escapes.

America’s gap between the rich and the rest might be worse than we ever knew.

Economists Emmanuel Saez, of the University of California–Berkeley, and Gabriel Zucman, of the London School of Economics, are out with a new set of findings on American wealth inequality, and their numbers are startling. Wealth, for reference, is the value of what you own—assets like housing, stocks, and bonds, minus your debts. And while it certainly comes up from time to time, it has tended to play second fiddle to income in conversations about America’s widening class divide. In part, that’s because it’s a trickier conversation subject. Wealth has always been far more concentrated than income in the United States. Plus, research suggested that the top 1 percent of households had actually lost some of its share since the 1980s.

That might not really have been the case.

Forget the 1 percent. The winners of this race, according to Zucman and Saez, have been the 0.1 percent. Since the 1960s, the richest one-thousandth of U.S. households, with a minimum net worth today above $20 million, have more than doubled their share of U.S. wealth, from around 10 percent to more than 20 percent. Take a moment to process that. One-thousandth of the country owns one-fifth of the wealth. By comparison, the entire top 1 percent of households takes in about 22 percent of U.S. income, counting capital gains…

Passing along an email I received a couple weeks ago(just noticed it):

Hi,

We recently finished working on a graphic “Is the U.S. Becoming a Police State?” which I thought I would share it with you in the hopes you might make some use of it. Here’s the link: http://www.securitydegreehub.com/police-state/

Feel free to pass the graphic along if you think your readers would like it. Either way, I found your blog very revealing with a bunch of smart commentary. Thanks for your time. I’ll be waiting for your response.

A recent Bloomberg View (2/24/14) headline reads, “Profit From Global Warming or Get Left Behind.” In his new book, WINDFALL (New York: Penguin, 2014), veteran journalist McKenzie Funk traveled the globe for six years, following the money in twenty-four countries to profile “hundreds of people who felt climate change would make them rich.”

In a separate interview, Funk notes that “on Wall Street you no longer get a lot of climate denial.” Largely indifferent to the causes of climate change, his respondents decided early on that investing in green technology was a losing proposition. Instead “the warmer the world, the less habitable it became, the bigger the windfall.”

In 2008, Royal Dutch Shell developed two sophisticated climate-risk scenarios called Blueprints and Scramble. The first modeled a greener future while the latter predicted – due to government inaction – a future of droughts, floods, heat waves and super storms. By 2012, Shell executives confided to Funk “We’ve gone to Scramble. This is a Scramble kind of world. This is what we’re doing.” Another Shell official opined “I will be one of those persons cheering for an endless summer in Alaska.”

The author’s message is that in the short term, there will be definite winners and losers because ecological catastrophe is “…not necessarily a financial catastrophe for everyone.” And while readers of this newspaper will temporarily avoid the most dire consequences of globing warming, upwards of one billion other human beings won’t be spared. [read the rest]

also see the article below along the same line
(and notice at the end how even this fine turns into a BUSINESS opportunity):

Anadarko Agrees To Record $5 Billion Fine For ’85 Years Of Poisoning The Earth’

Energy company Anadarko Petroleum Corp. on Thursday announced that it has agreed to pay $5.15 billion to clean up 85 years of harmful uranium, wood creosote, and rocket fuel pollution, in what is being widely reported as the largest environment settlement in history.

The deal with the U.S. Department of Justice ends a long-running lawsuit against the Kerr-McGee company, an energy and chemical company owned by Anadarko. Kerr-McGee, the lawsuit claimed, was responsible for detrimental pollution at more than 2,000 sites nationwide which caused at least 8,000 cases of cancer, which in some cases led to death.

“If you are responsible for 85 years of poisoning the earth, you are responsible for cleaning it up,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said at a press conference.

The settlement still must be approved by a federal judge after a 30-day public comment period. But if approved, U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Cole said $4.4 billion of the settlement would go toward cleanup and environmental claims.

Of that $4.4 billion, The Navajo Nation would get about $1 billion to remedy radioactive contamination from Kerr-McGee’s shuttered uranium mining operation, according to the litigation trust. $1.1 billion would address pollution from ammonium perchlorate, a primary component of fuel, in Nevada. Another $1.1 billion would be dedicated to cleaning up more than two dozen other contaminated sites around the U.S.

Though a $5.5 billion fine — larger even than the Justice Department’s settlement with BP over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster — sounds like it would be harmful for even the largest company, it is being widely reported that Anadarko is enjoying numerous benefits from settling the claims.

“Great news for Anadarko Petroleum today,” an article in Forbes read, noting that investors would be more likely to put money into the company now that it is no longer “haunted” by cleanup liabilities. Anadarko also announced that it would receive a $550 million net tax benefit from the settlement.

The settlement with Anadarko is also at the low end of what U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Allan Gropper of New York said the company should pay, noting in December that a fine from $5.15 billion to more than $14 billion would have been appropriate. Anadarko had claimed that liabilities should be as little as $850 million.

I think you’re onto something. My comments were censored on Project Censored. I’ve been kicked off Common Dreams and anything related to Bill McKibben for being anti-status quo. We can’t have jobs and a safe environment without nuclear and hydrogen power, we cannot unify carbon emissions without heavy, rare-earth, conflict metals without a unity of world regulation. We will fail because of simple physics. Weakness is our strength, and strength, weakness just depending how you play it.

MEGA FAUNA
ECONOMIC THERMODYNAMICS
►In 2008, China’s banks were worth 10 Trillion Dollars.
►In 2013 China’s banks were worth 25 Trillion Dollars.
►In just 5 years it grew a magical 15 Trillion Dollars!
►The entire 15 Trillion Dollar U.S. Commercial Banking System took 100 years to get to that size.
►The entire 15 Trillion Dollar U.S. Annual Economy (GDP) took 100 years to get that big.
►The China Bubble is the BIGGEST and FASTEST financial bubble in all of recorded human history.
►All bubbles burst as they drive gas prices higher and price spikes poke pin pricks in the bubble.
►This collapse will happen around the super-critical 2015 Paris climate negotiations rendering them useless.

Why Is This Important?
► 90% of Lions gone since 1993.
► 90% of Big Ocean Fish gone since 1950.
► 50% of Great Barrier Reef gone since 1985.
► 50% of Fresh Water Fish gone since 1987.
► 30% of Marine Birds gone since 1995.
► 28% of Land Animals gone since 1970.
► 28% of All Marine Animals gone since 1970.
► 50% of All Vertebrate Species gone by 2040.
► Extinctions are 1000 times faster than normal.
► Ocean acidification doubles by 2050.
► Ocean acidification triples by 2100.
► 90 elephants are killed every single day.
► 2-3 rhinos are killed every single day.

Why Is This Important?
MONEY = POWER = MONEY etc.
Energy conservation or efficiency doesn’t really save energy, but instead spurs economic growth and accelerated energy consumption. Here is the future.
►1/100th watt = $1 of global economic activity
►500 megawatts = 1 average power plant
►600 megawatts = China’s increased coal use every 10 days for the next 10 years
►500,000 megawatts = 500 planned new nuclear plants for China by 2050
►25 billion megawatts = World power output in 2014
► Each Day, C02 per megawatt of power increases
► Every 4½ days, 1,000,000 new carbon users are born.
► How many windmills, solar panels and batteries will give us just today’s 25 billion megawatts?

Why Is This Important?
All the world wants 2 things, jobs and a liveable planet. We can’t actually have both without building a new nuclear plant every day to the end, according to Tim Garrett of Utah U, a guy who is seriously into economic thermodynamics.

We are on track to wipe out three-quarters of life on earth in 300 years ― at most. While solar and wind power are useful, we cannot afford the ecological cost of running all our mega cities on just that type of power. Too many heavy and rare-earth metals, along with conflict minerals, would be required. The smog from the graphite mines alone, used to make the rechargeable batteries, would choke the planet. Even liquid metal batteries are too big and unsustainable.

Two researchers who tried to work out the economics of reducing global climate change to a tolerable level have come up with a perhaps surprising answer: essentially, we do not and cannot know what it would cost.
Even more surprising, probably, is their conclusion: not knowing is no excuse for not acting. “Mitigating climate change must proceed regardless of long-run economic analyses”, they conclude, “or risk making the world uninhabitable.”

We [the non-brain-dead] have known for a long time that a global industrial civilisation and a habitable planet are mutually exclusive concepts.

For as long as I can remember the only rhetoric coming from politicians mouths has always been focused on growth and jobs (and sometimes houses), with NZ politicians focusing particularly on narrowing the income gap between NZ and Australia to prevent depopulation of these isles, as hordes of New Zealand residents pack up and leave for a better life. Since the early 1970s the NZ population has increased by about 40%, largely as a consequence of immigration. Funny that.

Any way, it’s good to see common sense starting to come to the fore at long last: “Mitigating climate change must proceed regardless of long-run economic analyses”, they conclude, “or risk making the world uninhabitable.”

It’s a pity it is at least a decade too late.

We could now focus on reducing the imminent worldwide suffering. But I don’t know of any politician who wants to do that. They still want to increase the suffering to come. .

Woke this morning to a cloudless sky.

Just think; the extraordinarily dry conditions may interfere with the playing of rugby, and that would be a disaster of unprecedented proportions.

Fuckwit commentary from some of the usual suspects:

Embedded in this report is a reference to the Earth becoming largely or completely uninhabitable for humans, which the reporter obviously does not understand.

If there are adaptations to be implemented at the federal level, they will be massive boondoggles concocted by government’s corporate owners, the larger and more open-ended the better. They won’t involve any shrinkage in GDP or consumption and will be sold to the public through the propaganda apparatus as effective steps to ameliorate climate change. I wonder when they’ll close Mauna Loa observatory or start applying hedonic adjustments to the CO2 data. To go along with the recent “turn of the lights” stunt, let’s start a “hold your breath for one minute” campaign to reduce CO2 levels worldwide. Civilization is not becoming insane, it always has been. A collection of seven-billion hungry thermodynamic beasts kept alive by base instinct and greed, their dimly lit cortices implanted with mumbo-jumbo, pablum, trivia, superstition and the American Dream. Give them enough education to do a job, but only so much, not enough so they may ask “Why am I doing this?” And if they can’t stand their lives in the cancer, then make the “soma” available to them, numb them and feed them more poisonous, dopamine-releasing corporate food and entertainment and watch the fudge-pudged, tattooed leviathans wallow in the synthetic excrement of their techno-industrial cages.

The Saharan dust storms thickening Britain’s smog and coating cars from Cornwall to Aberdeen will become increasingly strong in the coming years as a “nasty mixture” of drought, development and intensive farming in North Africa pushes up air pollution, a leading dust expert warned yesterday.

The rapid population growth in Western Sahel countries such as Chad, Niger, Mali and Mauritani in the past 20 to 30 years has prompted a surge in agriculture which has greatly increased the amount of dust, Dr Robert Bryant, of Sheffield University, told The Independent.

He said there was every sign that the trend – which has also seen cars in Devon, London and Northern Ireland covered in a fine reddish-brown dust and caused breathing difficulties in asthma and chronic bronchitis sufferers – will continue.

“There has been a dramatic increase in some aspects of dust flux [emissions], which have doubled over the last 50 years. Population pressure alone is likely to exacerbate the problem and if current trends continue the amount could double again over the next 50 years,” said Dr Bryant, a Reader in Dryland Processes at the University of Sheffield.

Creating farmland generates dust because it often involves replacing the natural vegetation that keeps the soil in place, with a much sparser cover of crops that exposes the ground to the wind. Furthermore, as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of droughts, the amount of dust blown into the air will increase as more crops die and the soil becomes drier, Dr Bryant said.

The growing population in the Sahara has also generated a huge rise in other types of pollution, such as emissions from power stations, cars and mining, he added.

“These other types of pollution get mixed up with the dust to create a nasty mixture that can include airborne diseases such as foot and mouth and kind of extreme event could have serious health implications for the UK,” Dr Bryant said.

Foot and mouth disease is thought to have caused by a cloud of infected dust blown from the Sahara.

A spokesman for Department Energy and Climate Change spokesman, dismissed rumours that the Saharan dust might be radioactive. “We routinely monitor for radiation and the detected levels have not increased at all over the past few days.”

Caroline Barrere, a retired journalist from Kensington staying in the Madeiran capital of Funchal, told The Independent that she saw a giant cloud heading towards Britain at 3am on Tuesday morning as she stood on the balcony of her hotel suite overlooking the sea.

“I’ve never seen a black, charcoal mushroom cloud so enormous. It was tinged orange-pink and I thought it was the end of the world. It was really thick and enormous, like Hiroshima – it was terrifying.”…

‘When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied of life. Let one useless war after another be waged. Let the masses be thrust into extreme poverty and left without jobs while the elites, drunk on hedonism, accumulate vast fortunes through exploitation, speculation, fraud and theft. Reality, at the end, gets unplugged. We live in an age when news consists of Snooki’s pregnancy, Hulk Hogan’s sex tape and Kim Kardashian’s denial that she is the naked woman cooking eggs in a photo circulating on the Internet. Politicians, including presidents, appear on late night comedy shows to do gags and they campaign on issues such as creating a moon colony. “At times when the page is turning,” Louis-Ferdinand Celine wrote in “Castle to Castle,” “when History brings all the nuts together, opens its Epic Dance Halls! hats and heads in the whirlwind! Panties overboard!”

And those few who really “get it”, who really understand the horrors to be faced, begin attacking each other viciously over minor differences to the point where nothing gets accomplished.
All part of the insanity.
We can see it here.

Just finished reading Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction and watching that C-Span/Book TV video. It’s shocking how people don’t listen. She clearly states she is not going to tell people what they need to do. yet almost all of those coming up to ask a question is trying to ask just that question. We/they are clueless. They/we know what they/we need to do only they/we won’t do it. If she was to say, don’t send your children off to Wall St., don’t fly (while she does), don’t buy ipods, etc, etc, etc each person would respond quicker than a jackrabbit, “Duhh! But I can’t do that.” Denial or for the “educated” rationalization is a knee jerk reaction; how else could 5% of the world use 33% of the world’s resources. They/we won’t or can’t stop what they/we are doing.

After reading the book I was unclear how really serious the situation is. Was Kolbert a coward in not sounding the alarm or does she believe, as others have, that we still have time to act. We’ve been told time is running out for years (where the heck are we in the hourglass) and we have to act now, yet we’re certainly not acting NOW.

There is little, if any of Kolbert’s opinion in the book, it’s like watching her walk a tightrope trying to stay objective to the point of absurdity. Was this her own choice, her publishers, her employer (The New Yorker)? There was more of a sense of urgency coming from her in the live presentation she did than in the book

The last few paragraphs of the book end with references to people she knows who are expecting technology to fix the situation or that we’ll colonize another planet. Brilliant, bright, creative people. Shit where you eat then move on to another place. The pattern of man. Let’s go off to another world and do the same. Lather, wash, rinse, repeat. Don’t these “smart” people get the amount of energy and resources they’d need to shape another planet. Where are they going to get it from. I guess the asteroids Abby Martin talked about mining a few weeks ago.

Isn’t the simplest solution to just take care of what we have or had. Hey, let’s keep NYC going as it sucks up the life of everything around it till the peripheries are barren and dead.

Kolbert is another example of people who breed who shouldn’t have. In the acknowledgments portion of the book she thanks her boys for understanding why she couldn’t make all their soccer games while she wrote the book.Well, that’s a mind blower. She ought to be apologizing to her boys for flying all around the world using all that energy that is coming out of their “energy trust fund.”

It’s never been that I don’t like children. It’s always been that children are having children. it’s like copying a copy. Over time the copy loses all the lines of the original. It’s unclear and lacking in integrity. Did we ever really know how to parent? You got me.

Guy McPherson says, “Do no harm.” I’ve begun to wonder what the heck does that really mean and is it possible?

WE had the 1st and 2nd World Wars, why hasn’t the 3rd World War happened? Well it has and the Planet is the loser; we’ve been making war on the living Planet all this time. However, we lose too. The Planet is retaliating which will lead to human extinction from climate change or perhaps a small remnant of naked apes pathetically scrabbling to survive in a destroyed World which once was bountiful due to a sacred balance. As Jesus said: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”. But is stupid ignorance a defence?

30+ years ago Bill Mollison described how US chemical manufacturers lost a lot of demand when WW2 ended, so they declared war on nature in order to generate demand for chemicals. Vehicle and other manufacturers obligingly came up with systems to deliver the chemicals onto the crops, into the air etc., and increased their profits.

An international team of researchers has discovered a previously unknown atmospheric phenomenon over the tropical West Pacific. Like in a giant elevator to the stratosphere, many chemical compounds emitted at the ground pass unfiltered through the so-called ‘detergent layer’ of the atmosphere, known as the ‘OH shield.’ The newly discovered phenomenon over the South Seas boosts ozone depletion in the polar regions and could have a significant influence on the future climate of the Earth.

“Even though the sky appears to be an extensively uniform space for most people, it is composed of chemically and physically very different layers,” …

An international team of researchers headed by Potsdam scientist Dr. Markus Rex from the Alfred Wegener Institute has discovered a previously unknown atmospheric phenomenon over the South Seas. Over the tropical West Pacific there is a natural, invisible hole extending over several thousand kilometres in a layer that prevents transport of most of the natural and humanmade substances into the stratosphere by virtue of its chemical composition. Like in a giant elevator, many chemical compounds emitted at the ground pass thus unfiltered through this so-called “detergent layer” of the atmosphere. Scientists call it the “OH shield.” The newly discovered phenomenon over the South Seas boosts ozone depletion in the polar regions and could have a significant influence on the future climate of Earth — also because of rising air pollution in South East Asia.

At first Dr. Markus Rex suspected a series of flawed measurements. In October 2009 the atmospheric physicist from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) was on board the German research vessel “Sonne” to measure trace substances in the atmosphere in the tropical West Pacific. Tried and tested a thousand times over, the ozone probes he sent up into the tropical sky with a research balloon every 400 kilometres reported — nothing. Or to be more accurate: almost nothing. The ozone concentrations in his measurements remained nearly constantly below the detection limit of approx. 10 ppbv in the entire vertical range from the surface of Earth to an altitude of around 15 kilometres. Normally ozone concentrations in this part of the atmosphere are three to ten times higher. (One part of ozone per billion by volume (ppbv) means there is one ozone molecule for every billion air molecules.)

Although low values at an altitude of around 15 kilometres were known from earlier measurements in the peripheral area of the tropical West Pacific, the complete absence of ozone at all heights was surprising. However, after a short period of doubt and various tests of the instruments it dawned on the worldwide recognized ozone specialist that he might be onto a phenomenon yet unknown to science. A few research years later and after the involvement of other colleagues came confirmation: Markus Rex and his team on board the “Sonne” had tracked down a giant natural hole over the tropical South Seas, situated in a special layer of the lower atmosphere known as the “OH shield.” The research results on the newly discovered OH minimum will be published soon in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, with the Institute of Environmental Physics of the University of Bremen and other international research institutions as partners.

“Even though the sky appears to be an extensively uniform space for most people, it is composed of chemically and physically very different layers,” Markus Rex explains the complex makeup of the atmosphere. The air layers near the ground contain hundreds or even thousands of chemical compounds. This is why winter and spring, mountains and sea, city and forests all have a distinct smell. The great majority of these substances are broken down into water-soluble compounds in the lower kilometres of the atmosphere and are subsequently washed out by rain. Since these processes require the presence of a certain chemical substance, the so called hydroxyl (=OH) radical, this part of the atmosphere is called the “OH shield.” It acts like a huge atmospheric washing machine in which OH is the detergent.

The OH shield is part of the troposphere, as the lower part of the atmosphere is called. “Only a few, extremely long-lived compounds manage to make their way through the OH shield,” says Rex, “then they also get through the tropopause and enter the stratosphere.” Tropopause refers to the boundary layer between the troposphere and the next atmospheric layer above it, the stratosphere. Particularly substances that enter the stratosphere unfold a global impact. The reason for this is that once they have reached the stratosphere, their degradation products remain up there for many years and spread over the entire globe.

Extremely long-lived chemical compounds find their way to the stratosphere, even where the OH shield is intact. These include methane, nitrous oxide (“laughing gas”), halons, methyl bromide and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which are notorious as “ozone killers” because they play a major role in ozone depletion in the polar regions.

After many years of research scientists now understand the complicated process of stratospheric ozone depletion very well. “Nevertheless measured ozone depletion rates were often quite a bit larger than theoretically calculated in our models,” Markus Rex points out a long unsolved problem of atmospheric research. “Through the discovery of the OH hole over the tropical West Pacific we have now presumably made a contribution to solving this puzzle.” And at the same time discovered a phenomenon that raises a number of new questions for climate policy. Researchers are now tackling these questions in a new research project funded by the EU with around 9 million euros, i.e. “StratoClim,” which is coordinated by the Alfred Wegener Institute. Within this project a new monitoring station will be established in the tropical Westpacific, together with the Institute of Environmental Physics at the University of Bremen.

“We have to realise,” reminds the Potsdam atmospheric physicist, “that chemical compounds which enter the stratosphere always have a global impact.” Thanks to the OH hole that the researchers discovered over the tropical Pacific, greater amounts of brominated hydrocarbons can reach the stratosphere than in other parts of the world. Although their ascent takes place over the tropical West Pacific, these compounds amplify ozone depletion in the polar regions. Since scientists identified this phenomenon and took it into account in the modelling of stratospheric ozone depletion, their models have corresponded excellently with the actually measured data.

However, it is not only brominated hydrocarbons that enter the stratosphere over the tropical West Pacific. “You can imagine this region as a giant elevator to the stratosphere,” states Markus Rex using an apt comparison. Other substances, too, rise here to a yet unknown extent while they are intercepted to a larger extent in the OH shield elsewhere on the globe. One example is sulphur dioxide, which has a significant impact on the climate.

Sulphur particles in the stratosphere reflect sunlight and therefore act antagonistically to atmospheric greenhouse gases like CO2, which capture the heat of the sun on Earth. To put it simply, whereas greenhouse gases in the atmosphere heat the globe, sulphur particles in the stratosphere have a cooling effect. “South East Asia is developing rapidly in economic terms,” Markus Rex explains a problem given little attention to date. “Contrary to most industrial nations, however, little has been invested in filter technology up to now. That is why sulphur dioxide emissions are increasing substantially in this region at present.”

If one takes into account that sulphur dioxide may also reach the stratosphere via the OH hole over the tropical West Pacific, it quickly becomes obvious that the atmospheric elevator over the South Seas not only boosts ozone depletion, but may influence the climate of the entire Earth. In fact, the aerosol layer in the stratosphere, which is also composed of sulphur particles, seems to have become thicker in recent years. Researchers do not know yet whether there is a connection here.

But wouldn’t it be a stroke of luck if air pollutants from South East Asia were able to mitigate climate warming? “By no means,” Markus Rex vigorously shakes his head. “The OH hole over the South Seas is above all further evidence of how complex climate processes are. And we are still a long way off from being in a position to assess the consequences of increased sulphur input into the stratosphere. Therefore, we should make every effort to understand the processes in the atmosphere as best we can and avoid any form of conscious or unconscious manipulation that would have an unknown outcome.”

Background:

Why is there an OH hole over the West Pacific?

The air in the tropical West Pacific is extremely clean. Air masses in this area were transported across the expanse of the huge Pacific with the trade winds and for a long time no longer had contact with forests or other land ecosystems that produce innumerable short-lived hydrocarbons and release them into the air. Under these clean air conditions OH is formed from ozone through chemical transformation to a great degree. If there is hardly any ozone in the lower atmosphere (= troposphere), as is the case in the West Pacific, only little OH can be formed. The result is an OH hole.

Ozone, in turn, forms in the lower atmosphere only if there are sufficient nitrogen oxides there. Large amounts of nitrogen oxide compounds are produced in particular by intensive lightning over land. However, the air masses in the tropical West Pacific were not exposed to any continental tropical storms for a very long time during their transport across the giant ocean. And the lightning activity in storms over the ocean is relatively small. At the same time the lifetime of atmospheric ozone is short due to the exceptionally warm and moist conditions in the tropical West Pacific. In this South Sea region the surface temperatures of the ocean are higher than anywhere else on our planet, which makes the air not only quite warm, but also quite moist. The ozone is thus quickly lost, especially directly above the water. And due to the lack of nitrogen oxide compounds little ozone is subsequently formed. Rapid vertical mixing in the convection areas that exist everywhere over the warm ocean and in which the warm air rises takes care of the rest. Finally, there is no more ozone in the entire column of air in the troposphere. And without ozone (see above) the formation of OH is suppressed.

What impact does the OH hole over the West Pacific have?

The OH molecule is also called the detergent of the atmosphere. Nearly all of the thousands of different chemical substances produced by people, animals, plants, fungi, algae or microorganisms on the ground or in the oceans react quickly with OH and break down in this process. Therefore, virtually none of these substances rises into the stratosphere. In the area of the OH hole, however, a larger portion of this varied chemical mix can enter the stratosphere.

And local emissions may unfold a global impact, especially if they make it to the stratosphere. There they spread globally and can influence the composition of the air for many years — with far-reaching consequences for ozone chemistry, aerosol formation and climate.

Why wasn’t the OH hole discovered earlier?

The tropical West Pacific is one of the most remote regions on our planet. That is why extensive measurements of the air composition have yet to take place in this area. There is also a considerable gap in the otherwise dense network of global ozone measurement stations here. Even in the past measurements from the peripheral sections of the now investigated region showed minimal ozone values in the area of the upper troposphere, but not the consistently low values that have now been found across the entire depth of the troposphere. The newly discovered phenomenon reveals itself in its full scope only through the measurements that were conducted to such an extensive degree for the first time and was thus not able to be grasped at all previously.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Disease spreads from Asia to Africa and may already have jumped to crucial plantations in Latin America

Scientists have warned that the world’s banana crop, worth £26 billion and a crucial part of the diet of more than 400 million people, is facing “disaster” from virulent diseases immune to pesticides or other forms of control. [read it]

‘Ring of Fire’ fears renewed following earthquakes in California, Chile and Panama

A rash of earthquakes within the last week along a section of the Earth infamous for seismic activity is causing concern that more tremors will soon occur near the ominously named “Ring of Fire.”

Experts don’t think that a series of quakes in recent days are related to one another, but all seem to agree that three major incidents in both North and South America share at least one common bond: each quake and their subsequent aftershocks were located along the circum-Pacific seismic belt, or “Ring of Fire,” where scientists with the United States Geological Survey say 90 percent of the world’s earthquakes occur.

The magnitude-5.1 quake near Los Angeles, California last Friday may be thousands of miles away from the epicenters in Chile and Panama associated with the events on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, but their positions on the Ring of Fire put them into an a special category of quakes that include the one that shook Japan in 2011 and caused the major tsunami that contributed to the meltdown at the nuclear plant in Fukushima responsible for roughly 16,000 deaths. Around 81 of the world’s largest earthquakes, the USGS says, occur along the Ring of Fire.

According to seismologists, the Chile quake occurred because of activity involving two major tectonic plates that share a roughly 7,000-mile-long boundary beneath the eastern Pacific Ocean and are considered part of the Ring of Fire. The USGS says that that quake was caused when the massive Nazca plate slipped eastward underneath the continental crust of South America.

“The Nazca plate is sliding underneath the South American one at an average rate that ranges from three inches a year along its southern half to 2.6 inches a year along its northern extent,” Pete Spotts wrote for the Christian Science Monitor this week.

But seismologists say that recent activity within this region won’t necessarily nudge other tectonic plates into pushing the earth around further. Aftershocks, however, may continue to be a cause for concern within the area for upwards of weeks.
[read the rest]

________

One thing I’ve noticed is that volcanic activity is way up all over the world, like earthquakes – and I wonder if they are related. It seems likely since the one is shifting plates around and cracking the mantle while the other reacts by shifting pressurized magma as a result of these “weak spots” and becoming more “active.”

I have heard nothing from Paul Beckwith with respect to the multiplier for methane. Until someone demonstrates otherwise, I believe we should be using a factor of 300 times CO2 (the long-forgotten Precautionary Principle), in view of the fact that the atmospheric concentration of methane does not follow a decay curve, but is actually rising: every molecule of methane that gets oxidised to CO2 is replaced by another, with even more are arriving on the scene every second as a consequence of the activities of oil companies and coal companies -okay, we’ll blame the bacteria in wetlands, even though the amount of wetland goes down every year, plus cow farts- and all that’ before we even consider the humungous quantities available for release from clathrates and melting permafrost, some of which is being released right now etc.

Under the Harper regime of economic-expansion-whatever-the-cost-to-the-next-generation perhaps funding for climate research will be slashed. Or maybe the Canadian ‘Orcs’ will pass legislation making the use of the term ABRUPT CLIMATE CHNAGE a criminal offence, punishable by a long term of imprisonment.

Thinking further about that, I suppose I should say under the Harper regime of prop-up-dysfunctional-economic-arrangements-whatever-the-cost the entire world has become a sacrifice zone.

Should we care? The a very large segment of the masses are still clamouring for their own destruction.

I find myself looking at my fellow Canadians with a combination of disgust, fascination, envy and a little sadness. It can feel quite surreal at times when I am in Vancouver and watching the rat race. No one is talking. I care less everyday. I am a watcher.

The State Department has no idea what happened to $6 billion used to pay its contractors. In a special “management alert” made public Thursday, the State Department’s Inspector General Steve Linick warned “significant financial risk and a lack of internal control at the department has led to billions of unaccounted dollars over the last six years. The alert was just the latest example of the federal government’s continued struggle with oversight over its outside contractors.
[oh, there’s more]

Someone who has been describing another collapse for some time now, the collapse of the State Department, is Peter Van Buren and his “We Meant Well” website (as well as his book by the same name). It is worth reading. Mr. Van Buren is an intelligent insider who has a lot to say. Usually outrageous, often quite funny, it is about the slow and inevitable demise of the government of the United States of Orwell-landia seen from the view of what was once, whatever their sins, a professional and respected part of the foreign policy landscape. Some of the older posts, especially those related to Hillary Clinton are genuine thighslappers. Enjoy it as a break from this discourse.

Marc Faber warns Federal Reserve monetary bubble will burst in three years

April 2014 – New York – Gloom Boom & Doom Report publisher Marc Faber discusses the fragile state of the US and global financial systems… how rising inflation will affect the average American… how soon the bubble will burst… and why gold and silver will triumph. Here are a few highlights: “The US is a country that likes to create trouble, but they don’t like to clean up things.” “We’ve now been five years into the bull market and the US economy bottomed out in June 2009. We already had a crack-up boom—not in the economy of the typical household, but in the economy of the super-well-to-do people, whose asset prices rose dramatically and as a result created a huge wealth inequality. My view would be that we have already printed so much money, and to accelerate it will be bringing about numerous other problems, so my time frame is that the [bubble], maximum, will burst in three years’ time.”

“Once the collapse happens, the power of central banks will be curtailed greatly because people will realize who brought along first the Nasdaq bubble in 1999: The Federal Reserve. Who brought about the housing bubble between 2001 and 2007? The Federal Reserve. And who is bringing now along another great credit bubble and asset bubble? The Federal Reserve.” “I don’t think that anything is very cheap, but if I have to compare different asset prices, say real estate, stocks, bonds, commodities, gold, art, and so forth—and old cars—then I think that gold and silver [are] relatively inexpensive because they have had big corrections already, and you should not forget that the global bond market now is over $100 trillion.” –Casey Research

Extreme weather events are rocketing upwards in their frequency of occurrence, intensity, and duration and are impacting new regions that are unprepared. These events, such as torrential rains, are causing floods and damaging crops and infrastructure like roads, rail, pipelines, and buildings. Cities, states, and entire countries are being battered and inundated resulting in disruption to many peoples lives as well as enormous economic losses. As bad as this is, it is going to get much worse by at least 10 to 20 times. Why?

Greenhouse gas emissions from humans have changed the chemistry of the atmosphere. The optical absorption of infrared heat has increased in the atmosphere which raises temperature, and thus water vapor content, and therefore fuels more intense storms. The jet streams that guide these storms are slower and wavier and more fractured and cause our weather gyrations and weird behavior. Areas far north can get very warm, while areas far south can get very cold. Some areas get persistent drought. Then, the pattern can flip. The jet streams are much wavier in the north-south direction since the Arctic temperatures have warmed 5 to 8 times faster than the global average. This reduces the temperature difference between the Arctic and equator and basic physics forces the jets to slow and get wavier.

Why is the Arctic warming greatly amplified? The region is darkening and thus absorbing more sunlight, since the land-based snow cover in spring and the Arctic sea ice cover volume are both declining exponentially. The white snow and ice is being replaced by dark surfaces like the ocean and the tundra. The most detailed computer model on sea ice decline is a U.S. Naval Graduate School model, and it shows the sea ice cover could be gone by late summer in 2016. If this happens, the Arctic warming will rocket upwards, the jets will distort much more, and the extreme weather events will rocket upwards in frequency, amplitude, and duration and civilization will be hammered.

This temporary technological organization and assemblage of complexity exists only to convert energy and resource gradients into infrastructure and waste as quickly as possible. Given our systematic organization, sprinkled with ape tribal behavior and geographic speciation, we are like giant ecology eating tumors fighting and evolving to eat and grow the most. Finally our growth will be limited, you can imagine the several different ways this may happen. In the meantime, stuck within these competitive growths, we munch and crunch our way towards the lasting conclusion of civilization, smashing through a billion years worth of complexity supplied to us by organic evolution. Uncounted humans pass through their educational regimes only to thoughtlessly take their place within the metabolic machinery that keeps the tumor growing. Thoughtless, mindless, stupid.

In the past individuals attempted to make as many ‘copies’ of themselves as possible because that was what was required to pass on genes into the future successfully. And to do that required individuals acquire energy and resources, in competition and cooperation with others. Any individual who lacked the genetic code necessary to compete and cooperate to the right degree failed to deliver genes into the future and the unsuccessful gene combination and behavioural traits were eliminated.

However, that is clearly not the whole story, since humans have demonstrated their capacity at the individual level to limit their reproduction and their resource consumption, and have demonstrated their capacity as groups to limit their reproduction and resource consumption.

What characterises the worldwide insanity we have been witnessing is that policy has been institutionalised to be driven by process rather than goal. The purpose of NZ government policy, or US, or UK, or any other nation in ‘the club’ is not to establish a sustainable society but to facilitate the extraction of sequestered carbon at an increasing rate and facilitate its conversion into carbon dioxide at an increasing rate in order to feed an arbitrarily devised behemoths of state and international monetary systems; so corrupted has the system become that the purpose of human existence has been relegated to maximising the profits of corporations and financial speculators..

Since money-lenders and corporations are in control and write the rules, we have to wait for environmental catastrophe or energy depletion to demolish current economic arrangements. As we all know, both are underway.

“…demonstrated their capacity AS GROUPS to limit their reproduction and resource consumption.” Please name one that was a) succesful for any significant amount of time without giving up or being subsumed by a neighboring group and b) wasn’t reacting directly to collapse from prior overshoot.

It could be argued that Icelandic people managed that between the ninth century and the nineteenth century.

The Edo period in Japanese history is noted for the stable population, the isolationist policies, recycling and efficient use of everything, including human waste.

I suspect the original Chinese civilisation, which lasted around 4,000 years may have kept going for another 4,000 years if it were not for the Industrial Revolution in England and everything that followed.

However, there is little point in arguing about such examples when Anglo-American looting-and-polluting has become the dominant globalised system and is in the process of destroying everything.

I saw a piece on Vice recently about the Kurds in Syria. They’re a liberal democratic society with full gender equality. The women serve on the frontline in their military. Such beliefs and culture in the Middle East have caught the ire of Al-Qaeda which is now at war with the Kurds. I suspect overpopulation is not a problem with the Kurds.

“There is no longer such a thing as a Syrian opposition fighting for freedom. It is an amalgam of Islamic extremists, Arab nationalists, army deserters and criminal bands who have no agenda and certainly no regard for human life.”

Is America supporting the Kurds or are they still funding and backing the jihadists?

Noam Chomsky: Ecology, Ethics, Anarchism
Thursday, 03 April 2014 09:20 By Javier Sethness, Truthout
2014 0402chomsb
(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)
Also See: Noam Chomsky | The Prospects for Survival
There can be little doubt about the centrality and severity of the environmental crisis in the present day. Driven by the mindless “grow-or-die” imperative of capitalism, humanity’s destruction of the biosphere has reached and even surpassed various critical thresholds, whether in terms of carbon emissions, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, freshwater depletion, or chemical pollution. Extreme weather events can be seen pummeling the globe, from the Philippines – devastated by Typhoon Haiyan in November of last year – to California, which is presently suffering from the worst drought in centuries. As Nafeez Ahmed has shown, a recently published study funded in part by NASA warns of impending civilizational collapse without radical changes to address social inequality and overconsumption. Truthout’s own Dahr Jamail has written a number of critical pieces lately that have documented the profundity of the current trajectory toward anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) and global ecocide: In a telling metaphor, he likens the increasingly mad weather patterns brought about by ACD to an electrocardiogram of a “heart in defibrillation.”
Rather than conclude that such distressing trends follow intrinsically from an “aggressive” and “sociopathic” human nature, reasonable observers should likely associate the outgrowth of these tendencies with the dominance of the capitalist system, for, as Oxfam noted in a January 2014 report, the richest 85 individuals in the world possess as much wealth as a whole half of humanity – the 3.5 billion poorest people – while just 90 corporations have been responsible for a full two-thirds of the carbon emissions generated since the onset of industrialism. As these staggering statistics show, then, the ecological and climatic crises correspond to the extreme concentration of power and wealth produced by capitalism and upheld by the world’s governments. As a counter-move to these realities, the political philosophy of anarchism – which opposes the rule of both state and capital – may hold a great deal of promise for ameliorating and perhaps even overturning these trends toward destruction. Apropos, I had the great good fortune recently to interview Professor Noam Chomsky, renowned anarcho-syndicalist, to discuss the question of ecological crisis and anarchism as a remedy. Following is a transcript of our conversation.
JAVIER SETHNESS FOR TRUTHOUT: Professor Chomsky, thank you so kindly for taking the time today to converse with me about ecology and anarchism. It is a true honor to have this opportunity to speak with you. Before we pass to these subjects, though, I would like to ask you initially about ethics and solidarity. Would you say that Immanuel Kant’s notion of treating humanity as an end in itself has influenced anarchist and anti-authoritarian thought in any way? The concept of natural law arguably has a “natural” affinity with anarchism.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Indirectly, but I think it’s actually more general. My own view is that anarchism flows quite naturally out of major concerns and commitments of the Enlightenment, which found an expression in classical liberalism, and classical liberalism essentially was destroyed by the rise of capitalism – it’s inconsistent with it. But anarchism, I think, is the inheritor of the ideals that were developed in one or another form during the Enlightenment – Kant’s expression is one example – exemplified in a particular way in classical liberal doctrine, wrecked on the shoals of capitalism, and picked up by the libertarian left movements, which are the natural inheritors of them. So in that sense, yes, but it’s broader.
You have described humanity as being imperiled by the destructive trends on hand in capitalist society – or what you have termed “really existing capitalist democracies” (RECD). Particularly of late, you have emphasized the brutally anti-ecological trends being implemented by the dominant powers of settler-colonial societies, as reflected in the tar sands of Canada, Australia’s massive exploitation and export of coal resources, and, of course, the immense energy profligacy of this country. You certainly have a point, and I share your concerns, as I detail in Imperiled Life: Revolution against Climate Catastrophe, a book that frames the climate crisis as the outgrowth of capitalism and the domination of nature generally understood. Please explain how you see RECD as profoundly at odds with ecological balance.

The task of the state is to rescue the rich and the powerful and to protect them, and if that violates market principles, okay, we don’t care about market principles. The market principles are essentially for the poor.
RECD – not accidentally, pronounced “wrecked” – is really existing capitalist democracy, really a kind of state capitalism, with a powerful state component in the economy, but with some reliance on market forces. The market forces that exist are shaped and distorted in the interests of the powerful – by state power, which is heavily under the control of concentrations of private power – so there’s close interaction. Well, if you take a look at markets, they are a recipe for suicide. Period. In market systems, you don’t take account of what economists call externalities. So say you sell me a car. In a market system, we’re supposed to look after our own interests, so I make the best deal I can for me; you make the best deal you can for you. We do not take into account the effect on him. That’s not part of a market transaction. Well, there is an effect on him: there’s another car on the road; there’s a greater possibility of accidents; there’s more pollution; there’s more traffic jams. For him individually, it might be a slight increase, but this is extended over the whole population. Now, when you get to other kinds of transactions, the externalities get much larger. So take the financial crisis. One of the reasons for it is that – there are several, but one is – say if Goldman Sachs makes a risky transaction, they – if they’re paying attention – cover their own potential losses. They do not take into account what’s called systemic risk, that is, the possibility that the whole system will crash if one of their risky transactions goes bad. That just about happened with AIG, the huge insurance company. They were involved in risky transactions which they couldn’t cover. The whole system was really going to collapse, but of course state power intervened to rescue them. The task of the state is to rescue the rich and the powerful and to protect them, and if that violates market principles, okay, we don’t care about market principles. The market principles are essentially for the poor. But systemic risk is an externality that’s not considered, which would take down the system repeatedly, if you didn’t have state power intervening. Well there’s another one, that’s even bigger – that’s destruction of the environment. Destruction of the environment is an externality: in market interactions, you don’t pay attention to it. So take tar sands. If you’re a major energy corporation and you can make profit out of exploiting tar sands, you simply do not take into account the fact that your grandchildren may not have a possibility of survival – that’s an externality. And in the moral calculus of capitalism, greater profits in the next quarter outweigh the fate of your grandchildren – and of course it’s not your grandchildren, but everyone’s.
Now the settler-colonial societies are particularly interesting in this regard because you have a conflict within them. Settler-colonial societies are different than most forms of imperialism; in traditional imperialism, say the British in India, the British kind of ran the place: They sent the bureaucrats, the administrators, the officer corps, and so on, but the place was run by Indians. Settler-colonial societies are different; they eliminate the indigenous population. Read, say, George Washington, a leading figure in the settler-colonial society we live in. His view was – his words – was that we have to “extirpate” the Iroquois; they’re in our way. They were an advanced civilization; in fact, they provided some of the basis for the American constitutional system, but they were in the way, so we have to extirpate them. Thomas Jefferson, another great figure, he said, well, we have no choice but to exterminate the indigenous population, the Native Americans; the reason is they’re attacking us. Why are they attacking us? Because we’re taking everything away from them. But since we’re taking their land and resources away and they defend themselves, we have to exterminate them. And that’s pretty much what happened – in the United States almost totally – huge extermination. Some residues remain, but under horrible conditions. Australia, same thing. Tasmania, almost total extermination. Canada, they didn’t quite make it. There’s residues of what are called First Nations around the periphery. Now, those are settler-colonial societies: there are elements of the indigenous populations remaining, and a very striking feature of contemporary society is that, throughout the world – in Canada, Latin America, Australia, India, all over the world, the indigenous societies – what we call tribal or aboriginal or whatever name we use – they’re the ones who are trying to prevent the race to destruction. Everywhere, they’re the ones leading the opposition to destruction of the environment. In countries with substantial indigenous populations, like say in Ecuador and Bolivia, they’ve passed legislation, even constitutional provisions, calling for rights of nature, which is kind of laughed at in the rich, powerful countries, but is the hope for survival.

The settler-colonial societies are a striking illustration of, first of all, the massive destructive power of European imperialism.
Ecuador, for example, made an offer to Europe – they have a fair amount of oil – to leave the oil in the ground, where it ought to be, at a great loss to them – huge loss for development. The request was that Europe would provide them with a fraction – payment – of the loss – a small fraction – but the Europeans refused, so now they’re exploiting the oil. And if you go to southern Colombia, you find indigenous people, campesinos, Afro-Americans struggling against gold mining, just horrible destruction. Same in Australia, against uranium mining; and so on. At the same time, in the settler-colonial societies, which are the most advanced and richest, that’s where the drive is strongest toward the destruction of the environment. So you read a speech by, say, Obama, for example, at Cushing, Oklahoma – Cushing is kind of the center for bringing together and storing the fossil fuels which flow into there and are distributed. It was an audience of oil types. To enormous applause, he said that during his administration more oil had been lifted than any previous one – for many, many years. He said pipelines are crossing America under his administration to the extent that practically everywhere you go, you’re tripping across a pipeline; we’re going to have 100 years of energy independence; we’ll be the Saudi Arabia of the 21st century – in short, we’ll lead the way to disaster. At the same time, the remnants of the indigenous societies are trying to prevent the race to disaster. So in this respect, the settler-colonial societies are a striking illustration of, first of all, the massive destructive power of European imperialism, which of course includes us and Australia, and so on. And also the – I don’t know if you’d call it irony, but the strange phenomenon of the most so-called “advanced,” educated, richest segments of global society trying to destroy all of us, and the so-called “backward” people, the pre-technological people, who remain on the periphery, trying to restrain the race to disaster. If some extraterrestrial observer were watching this, they’d think the species was insane. And, in fact, it is. But the insanity goes back to the basic institutional structure of RECD. That’s the way it works. It’s built into the institutions. It’s one of the reasons it’s going to be very hard to change.
In Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe (2013), you argue that global society must be reorganized so that “care for ‘the commons’ […] become[s] a very high priority, as it has been in traditional societies, quite often.”(1) You make similar conclusions in an essay from last summer reflecting on the importance of the efforts to defend Gezi Park in Istanbul, which you frame as being part of a “a struggle in which we must all take part, with dedication and resolve, if there is to be any hope for decent human survival in a world that has no borders.” How do you see the possibility of thoroughgoing social transformation and the devolution of power taking place in the near future – through the emergence and sustained replication of workers’ and community councils, as in the participatory economic model (Parecon), for example?
That’s a well-worked out, detailed proposal for one form of democratic control of popular institutions – social, economic, political, others. And it is particularly well-worked out, in extensive detail. Whether that’s the right form or something other, I think it’s a little early to tell. My own feeling is that a fair amount of experimentation has to be done to see how societies can and should function. I’m a little skeptical about the possibility of sketching it in detail in advance. But that certainly should be taken very seriously, along with other proposals. But something along those lines seems to me a prerequisite first of all for reasonable life, put aside the environment – just the way a society ought to work, with people in a position where they can make decisions about the things that matter to them. But also I think it is a prerequisite for survival at this point. I mean, the human species is reaching a point which is unique in human history – just take a look at species’ destruction, forget humans. Species destruction now is at the level of 65 million years ago, when an asteroid hit the Earth and destroyed the dinosaurs and a huge number of species – massive species destruction. That’s being replicated right now, and humans are the asteroid. And we’re on the list, not far.
In a speech reproduced over 20 years ago in the film version of Manufacturing Consent, you describe hegemonic capitalist ideology as reducing the life-world of Earth to an “infinite resource” and “an infinite garbage can.” Even then, you had identified the capitalist tendency toward total destruction: you speak of a looming cancellation of destiny for humanity if the madness of capitalism is not halted within this, the “possibly terminal phase of human existence.” The very title and argumentation of Hegemony or Survival (2003) continue in this line, and in Hopes and Prospects (2010), you claim the threat to the chance for decent survival to be one of the major externalities produced, again, by RECD. How do you think a resurgent international anarchist movement might respond positively to such alarming trends?

It’s outrageous to demand or even observe the poorest, most repressed people in the world taking the lead in trying to save the human species and in fact innumerable other species from destruction. So we should join them.
In my view, anarchism is just the most advanced form of political thought. As I’ve said, it draws from the Enlightenment, its best ideals; the primary contributions of classical liberalism carry it forward. Parecon, which you mentioned, is one illustration – they don’t call themselves anarchists – but there are others like it. So I think that a resurgent anarchist movement, which would be the peak of human intellectual civilization, should join with the indigenous societies of the world so that they don’t have the burden to save humanity from its own craziness. This should take place within the richest, most powerful societies. It’s kind of a moral truism that the more privilege you have, the more responsibility you have. It’s elementary in every domain: you have privilege; you have opportunities; you have choices: you have responsibilities. In the rich, powerful societies, privileged people like us – we’re all privileged people – we have the responsibility to take the lead in trying to prevent the disasters that our own social institutions are creating. It’s outrageous to demand or even observe the poorest, most repressed people in the world taking the lead in trying to save the human species and in fact innumerable other species from destruction. So we should join them. That’s the role of an anarchist movement.
In “Human Intelligence and the Environment” (2010), you raise the possibility of factory workers taking control of the means of production and autonomously deciding to break with business as usual, opting instead to produce solar panels or high-speed rail. This recommendation is entirely anarcho-syndicalist in nature, in keeping with your own proclivities: indeed, it bears much affinity with the prospect of an ecological anarcho-syndicalism, a concept that has been advanced by the Environment Union Caucus of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW-EUC) recently. A particularly promising proposal the EUC has made is that of an ecological general strike. In a similar vein, economic historian Richard Smith recently called for the mass shuttering of large corporations and vast swathes of industry as a means of giving humanity and nature a chance against climate destruction. Moreover, since the US military is the single largest contributor to the problem of anthropogenic climate disruption, the Pentagon should effectively be dismantled for this reason, among others, of course. How might activists present these pressing goals in ways that do not lend themselves to being dismissed as mere utopianism?
Well, let’s take the idea of converting industry to producing solar panels, mass-transportation, and so on. That was not utopian. The US government virtually nationalized the auto industry a couple years ago – not entirely, but took over large parts of it. There were choices at that point. If there had been a powerful movement of the kind that we’re discussing, with a popular base, it could have pressed for something very realistic, which I think would have had the support of the working class. A strike will be regarded as a weapon against them – it’s taking away their livelihoods, their survival. The choices were two, really: either the government rescues the auto industry at the taxpayers’ expense and hands it back to pretty much the original owners, maybe different faces, but structurally the same owners, and have them produce what they were doing before, which is destructive. That was one possibility; that was the one that was taken. The other possibility, which could have been taken, and with a sufficient powerful popular movement might well have been taken, is to put those factories into the hands in the working class, and have them make their choices rationally, in the interests of themselves, their communities, the general society – and do exactly what you were describing: produce solar panels.

If I want to go home today, the market does offer me a choice between a Ford and a Toyota, but not between a car and a subway.
Take mass transportation. Going back to markets – if you take an economics course, they tell you markets offer choices. That’s partly true, but very narrowly. Markets restrict choices, sharply restrict choices. Mass transportation is an example. Mass transportation is not a choice offered on the market. If I want to go home today, the market does offer me a choice between a Ford and a Toyota, but not between a car and a subway. That’s just not one of the choices available in market systems, and this is not a small point. Choices that involve common effort and solidarity and mutual support and concern for others – those are out of the market system. The market system is based on maximization of individual consumption, and that is highly destructive in itself. It’s destructive even for the human beings involved – it turns them into sociopathic individuals. But it also means that the kinds of things that are needed for survival are out of the market system – like mass-transportation. That’s the form of economic growth that could help preserve the hopes for survival. I don’t think that it was at all unrealistic for that to have been done; there was nothing utopian about that.
Now as compared with things like say general strikes, I think that’s much a better step to take. It’s not saying, let’s throw a wrench in the machine and harm everybody in the interest of some longer-term goal. It’s saying, let’s take a wrench and fix the machine, so it can function right now, with all you guys working, doing better jobs, running it yourselves. You’re better off psychologically, socially, in every respect, and you’re also producing a world that makes sense to live in. That’s, I think, the better way to proceed, in general.
According to German critical theorist Herbert Marcuse, revolution can be defined in part as action which seeks to secure the life, freedom, and happiness of future generations.(2) In light of looming catastrophic climate change, this definition would seem to hold a great amount of importance today. Within the modern Western revolutionary tradition, some of the most promising movements have arguably been Gracchus Babeuf and the Conspiracy of Equals, Rosa Luxemburg and the Spartacus League, and the Spanish anarchists. What would you say is the role of direct action in revolutionary struggle?

A multinational frequently will refuse an offer by the workers to buy out something they want to close and prefer to take the loss of just destroying it to having the precedent of worker-owned enterprises.
First of all, I think we shouldn’t assume that revolutionary struggle is the only option. What we’ve just been discussing, for example, you can call reformist if you like: it’s taking the institutions, reshaping them, reconstructing them, turning them into democratic institutions, and carrying out actions that are quite feasible and would be beneficial for all of us. Is that a revolution, is it a reform? Who knows? What’s the role of direct action, say, in that? Well, the role of direct action would have been realistically for popular movements to have pressured the government to take that direction, which would not have been impossible. In fact, right now in the Rust Belt – something like this happened in the old Rust Belt, on a much smaller scale. Back in 1977, US Steel, a major corporation, decided to close its operations in Youngstown, Ohio, which was a steel town that had been built by steelworkers, by the union; it was a major steel town. That was going to destroy everyone’s occupation, the community, the society, everything – and it’s a decision made by bankers somewhere, who weren’t making enough profit. The steelworkers union offered to buy the plants and have them run by the workforce. This was an effort that the corporation didn’t want. Actually it’s kind of interesting – it would have been more profitable for them, but I think a class interest militated against it. This happens frequently. A multinational frequently will refuse an offer by the workers to buy out something they want to close and prefer to take the loss of just destroying it to having the precedent of worker-owned enterprises. That’s what it looks like to me; I can’t prove it. Corporations are totalitarian institutions – we don’t get access to their internal decisions – but that’s what it looks like.
Anyway, the company refused, and it went to the courts. I think it went all the way to the Supreme Court. Staughton Lynd argued the case for the community and the steelworkers; they lost, but they could have won, with enough popular support. Anyhow, after they lost, the steel [factories] were abandoned, but they didn’t give up. Working people started developing small enterprises – worker-owned – which they tried to integrate into the community, and it’s now proliferated significantly. Around Cleveland, northern Ohio, there’s quite a network of worker-owned enterprises – not worker-managed. There’s a gap. But worker-owned enterprises which can become worker-managed. It’s expanding. Right now there’s an effort by the US steelworkers union to make some sort of a deal with Mondragón, the huge Basque conglomerate which is again worker-owned, with management selected by workers, but not worker-managed. And that’s got some prospects, too.

You just can’t give general formulas for tactical choices. They depend on an exact, close analysis of the situation.
So what is direct action? Well, all of these things are direct action; they’re direct action geared to the existing circumstances. Direct action has to be based on an analysis of what the existing circumstances are, and how an action can modify them positively. There’s no general formula; you can’t say direct action is good or bad. Sometimes it can harmful, sometimes it can be beneficial; sometimes it can be revolutionary, sometimes it can be reformist. You simply ask yourself what can be achieved now. So these developments in, say, northern Ohio, really are reformist – they’re even supported by Republican governors and by some sectors of business, because it sort of fits their right-wing, libertarian conceptions. Fine, let’s pursue that – nothing wrong with it. But you just can’t give general formulas for tactical choices. They depend on an exact, close analysis of the situation.
The Spartacists are a good case in point. Rosa Luxemburg went along with the Spartacist uprising, though she was opposed to it. She was opposed to it not in principle but because she realized it was going to fail, was going to be crushed. But out of solidarity she went along with it, and she was killed.
Returning to the question of natural law, I would like to ask whether you think natural right applies to non-human animals? In an interview from 2010, you acknowledged that there exists a “moral case” for vegetarianism, but at a recent talk at University College London, you claimed that animals cannot have the same rights as humans because, lacking reason, they cannot be considered to have responsibilities. Can you clarify what you mean by this? As you likely know, many anarchists and anti-authoritarians today consider vegetarianism and veganism essential to the project of reducing humanity’s domination over nature.
That makes sense, but that’s separate from the question of whether animals have the same rights as humans. It’s a fact that animals don’t have responsibilities; we can’t overlook that. If I have a dog, the dog has no responsibilities. Maybe I’d like it to bark when a criminal comes, but I can’t say the dog’s guilty if it didn’t do it. So it’s a fact that animals don’t have responsibilities. Responsibilities are related to rights. This does not say you should murder animals, but it is a recognition of reality. In fact, vegetarianism or veganism, I think, have a moral basis. But so do lots of other things. Like when you got here, you drove or took public transportation, meaning you used energy – that harms the environment. You made a choice: your choice was to harm the environment in order to come here so we could have this discussion. We’re making choices like that every moment of the day. Well, one of the choices has to do with people in countries where there is meat, but not much else: should they eat it? That’s another choice. We have our own choices. We are always – we can’t overlook the fact that we are constantly making choices which have negative effects, and this is one of them. There is an opportunity cost to vegetarianism.
Personally, I’m not a vegetarian – I almost never eat meat. The reason is I just don’t have time for it; I don’t have the time to think about it; I don’t want to think about it. I just pick up whatever saves me time, which usually is not meat, but I don’t purposely check to see if there’s a piece of chicken in the salad. Okay, that’s a choice. I don’t like – I don’t think we should have factory farming; the free-range business is mostly a joke – I understand that very well. With regard to rights and responsibilities, they do relate, and I don’t think we can overlook that. You can say the same about an infant: an infant doesn’t have responsibilities. But the reason we grant the infant rights is because of speciesism, and you can’t overlook that, either.
In theoretical terms, I sense a great affinity between the analysis you and Edward S. Herman present in Manufacturing Consent and the dissident cultural research engaged in by Western Marxists during the twentieth century. You are famously given to quoting Antonio Gramsci’s saying, “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” I would like to ask whether you believe the US populace to be too conservative, distracted, and enthralled by the system to move radically against it? Do you think the public will become the “second superpower” you hope for in Hegemony or Survival?
I’m not sure the public is that conservative, frankly. There are some interesting indications to the contrary. So for example in 1976, the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence, there were polls taken in which people were asked what they thought was in the Constitution. Nobody has a clue what’s in the Constitution. But the answers basically were: Do you think this is an obvious truth, and if it is – it’s probably in the Constitution. One of the questions was “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” and the majority of the population thought that was in the Constitution, because it’s obviously true. In the late 1980s, there were polls taken asking people, “do you think that a right to health care is in the Constitution?” A very large proportion, I think maybe a majority of the population, thought it was in the Constitution. If you take a look at polls generally, you find that even among sectors of the population that are considered very right-wing – you do studies of people who say, “get the government off my back, I don’t want the government” – they turn out to be social democrats. They want more spending on health, more spending on education, more spending on, say, mothers with dependent children – but not welfare, because welfare was demonized by racists, Reagan and others. And this runs across the board, even on international affairs. So a majority of the population thinks that the US ought to give up the veto at the Security Council, and follow what the general world population believes is right. You take a look at taxes, and it’s striking. There’ve been polls on taxes for about 40 years. Overwhelmingly, the population thinks the rich should be taxed more – they’re undertaxed. The policy goes in the opposite direction. Polls are not definitive: you have to inquire into why people are answering the way they do; there could be a lot of reasons. But they’re not insignificant, either.

My own feeling is that people like Adam Smith were basically right, that there is a natural sympathy for others. I think the rich and powerful understand that. I think that’s one of the reasons why there’s such massive effort to destroy the institutions in the society that are based on solidarity.
My own feeling is that people like Adam Smith were basically right, that there is a natural sympathy for others. I think the rich and powerful understand that. I think that’s one of the reasons why there’s such massive effort to destroy the institutions in the society that are based on solidarity. So, for example, why is the right wing – and in fact not just the right wing, because it goes over to Obama – so intent on undermining Social Security? It costs nothing, essentially; it’s a very efficient program; people survive on it; it works very well; there’s no economic problems that couldn’t be tinkered with – it’s really marginal. But there’s a major effort to destroy it. Why? It’s based on solidarity. It’s based on concern for others. There’s a major attack on the public schools – deep underfunding, vouchers, all kinds of things. Foundations are trying to undermine them. Why? Public schools are a major contribution to modern society. They’re one of the real contributions of American society – mass public education. Why destroy them? Well, they’re based on solidarity. If you take the ideology that we’re supposed to believe in, why should I pay taxes for the schools in my neighborhood? I don’t have kids in school, I don’t have grandchildren in school, and I never will. Why should I pay taxes? Well, you pay taxes so that the kid across the street will go to school, because you care about other people. But that has to be driven out of people’s heads. It’s a little like markets and consumption. Markets are favored by the economics profession, by the rich, and so on, up to a point – they really don’t believe in them, they want the powerful state to come in and save them if they’re in trouble. But ideologically they’re preferred, because they restrict human action to individual self-gratification – not mutual support, not protection of the commons.

One part was the Charter of Liberties – the central part was presumption of innocence. That’s out the window. By now, being “guilty” means Obama wants to kill you tomorrow; that’s the definition of guilty. “Innocent” means he hasn’t gotten around to it yet.
Actually the commons are an interesting case. We’re coming up to the eight hundredth anniversary of the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta had two parts. One part was the Charter of Liberties – the central part was presumption of innocence. That’s out the window. By now, being “guilty” means Obama wants to kill you tomorrow; that’s the definition of guilty. “Innocent” means he hasn’t gotten around to it yet. But the other part of the Magna Carta was the Charter of the Forests – that’s the part that you find in popular myth, like the Robin Hood myths. Robin Hood was protecting the commons from the predators. That’s a big part of our history – English history. The commons were cultivated by the general population. The commons were the forests, the fields, the source of fuel, food, welfare – you know, widows would pick things from the forest to survive. And it was nurtured – it was nurtured by the public, it was cared for – they weren’t let to grow into jungles. They were carefully cared for. The Charter of the Forests was an effort not by the population but by the barons to protect the commons from the king, but the population wanted to protect the commons for themselves.

Privatization is the tragedy of the commons. We can see that in fact: When you privatize the commons, it gets destroyed for private profit. If the commons are kept under common control, they are cultivated and nurtured, because people care about each other, and they care about the future.
Then you move into the capitalist period, beginning with the enclosure movements which drove people off the land and so on, and you have a destruction of the commons. Today, in the capitalist ethic, there’s a concept called the “tragedy of the commons” which you study in economics, which teaches you that if you don’t have private ownership of the commons, it’s going to be destroyed. Well, based on capitalist morality, that’s true. If I don’t own it, what should I do to try to preserve it? But in ordinary human life, that’s just totally false. Privatization is the tragedy of the commons. We can see that in fact: When you privatize the commons, it gets destroyed for private profit. If the commons are kept under common control, they are cultivated and nurtured, because people care about each other, and they care about the future. When you ask, is the population conservative? I doubt it. I think these are deeply rooted sentiments and understandings which show up all the time: They showed up in labor struggles against the industrial system which was dehumanizing people, in peasant societies they show up, in indigenous societies today struggling against, say, gold mines – maybe it’ll give them more material wealth, but it’ll destroy their lives. You find this everywhere. And in the great thinkers of the past, you know, in the people we aren’t supposed to admire, like Adam Smith, it’s a central doctrine.
Actually it’s kind of interesting, if you look at Smith – everybody knows the phrase “invisible hand,” but practically nobody looks at how he used the phrase. He rarely used it, a couple of times. One of the uses is when he discusses what would happen – it’s an agrarian society he’s talking about – what would happen if some landlord controlled almost all the land? What would happen? He says, well, out of his natural sympathy and concern for other people, he would distribute the wealth, so, as if by an invisible hand, society would end up being egalitarian. That’s the invisible hand. The other major usage of it actually is in an argument against – against – what we call neoliberal globalization. He considers England and asks what would happen if in England the merchants and manufacturers decided to invest abroad and import from abroad. He says, they would gain, and England would suffer. However, they have a kind of natural tendency to want to function in their own society – a kind of a “home bias,” it’s sometimes called, kind of like an affinity to their own societies. So as if by an invisible hand, England will be saved from the ravages of what we call neoliberal globalization. That’s not what you’re taught. But they’re coming from a different era. That’s the precapitalist era, and conceptions were quite different before capitalist morality distorted them.
1. Noam Chomsky and Laray Polk, Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2013), 83.
2. Herbert Marcuse, “Ethics and Revolution,” in Ethics and Society: Original Essays on Contemporary Moral Problems, ed. Richard T. De George (New York: Anchor Books, 1964), 140-1.
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conclusion:
“How is it that the leading economists, politicians, journalist, along with most academics, speak matter-of-factly about a future that cannot exists, at least not without the destruction of life as we know it (and with it, as the most tragic collateral damage, our dearly beloved economy)? How is it that this big blank unidentified white space that stands at the center of the American way of life has gone all but unnoticed by anyone who seems to matter? The answer is in some ways painfully simple: obviously the pot already had a hole in it when we borrowed it. Beyond that, we might conclude, our expectations are far more powerful than abstract logic and all the evidence pointing to a frightening and unimaginable future. We value our consumption, or are so afraid to go without it, to the extent that logic, reason, and data are of insignificant mental or emotional consequence. In America, we talk incessantly about our way of life or the American Dream, and with great allegiance and fervor. The stories we tell about ourselves and our way of life—the way we narrate our conscious experience and perception of things—have no place in them for the most basic, and mainly uncontested, facts about energy and the environment. Until we hit rock bottom, perhaps, we will be unable to shake free of the constraints of beliefs and expectations gone wild. I hope we can change stories, and our course, before then–though hope is hard-earned these days.”

An upcoming UN report suggests that unproven technologies to suck carbon out of the air might be a fix for climate change, according to a leaked draft obtained by the Guardian.

Scientists and government officials gather in Berlin this week ahead of Sunday’s publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s third part of its series of blockbuster climate change reports, which deals with policies addressing the emissions that drive global warming.

But environmentalists criticised the report’s inclusion of a controversial new technique that would involve burning biomass – trees, plant waste, or woodchips – to generate electricity, and then capturing the released carbon, pumping it into geological reservoirs underground.

Proponents of the technique – known as bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) – suggest that regrown trees and crops might sequester additional carbon, making the technology “negative emission” because it might reduce the overall amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

…

It is part of broader group of geoengineering technologies to suck carbon dioxide out of the air – most of them experimental – that the IPCC is now forecasting may require “large-scale deployment” to keep global warming below rises of 2C.

But critics have warned that “negative emissions” claims about the technology aren’t well-founded, since associated industrial agriculture and forestry activities cause heavy emissions and regrown tree plantations do not act as carbon sinks. They further warn that large-scale conversion of land for the technology could threaten the livelihoods of millions of people in developing countries in the same way that the drive for biofuels has been linked to land grabs and food price rises.

“The technology is the dangerous spawn of two very bad ideas: it brings together the false premises and injustices of the bio-energy debacle with the risky, costly and unproven notion that we can bury carbon dioxide out of sight. That hardly seems a hopeful formula for calming the climate crisis. Such techno-fix fantasies will be welcomed by oil companies because they distract attention from the obvious solution of cutting fossil fuel use,” said Almuth Ernsting, co-director of bio-energy watchdog Biofuelwatch.

A paper released last week by US-based Partnership for Policy Integrity concludes that biomass-burning facilities produce more pollutants and carbon emissions per megawatt-hour than coal-burning.

Meanwhile, carbon capture and storage technologies remain expensive, may leak, and will be impossible to commercialise soon enough to make an impact on carbon reductions before 2050, experts say. At present most of the carbon dioxide captured from existing carbon-capture projects is being sold for “enhanced oil recovery”, which extracts extra petroleum from fields already exploited by conventional methods.

The full UN draft report admits that “the potential costs and risks of BECCS are subject to considerable scientific uncertainty,” and the most recent UN report on climate change impacts advised that such CO2 removal technologies “might invite complacency regarding mitigation efforts.”

Observers have pointed out that one of the co-chairs of the UN report’s drafting team, Prof Ottmar Edenhofer, has been a long-time advocate for the BECCS technology.

The report refers to the CO2 removal technologies as “negative emissions” instead of geoengineering, a label that certain proponents have been promoting to disassociate the technologies from criticisms of geoengineering.

Currently, the draft for policymakers makes no mention of solar geoengineering, an even more controversial method that involves spraying sulphate aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect the sun and cool the planet. But observers close to the process say that Russia has continued to push for high-profile mentions of the solar geoengineering approach right up to the latest drafts of the report.

In the early 2000s the Bush administration was trumpeting a hydrogen economy within a few years and a manned mission to Mars by 2015.

Capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide lies within a similar realm of fantasy and misinformation.

Any mechanical device or system that compresses air containing CO2 adds to the CO2 predicament because that device or system requires energy to run it, and that energy will directly or indirectly result in additional CO2 emissions.

There is no industrial chemical method to remove CO2 from the atmosphere that does not involve the release of CO2 at some other stage (usually a lot more than is captured).

Pumping a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide (exhaust gases) into holes in the ground may temporarily hide the problem, and in doing so and create yet another time bomb for future generations to deal with. That’s if there were going to be any future generations.

All proposals to fix the CO2 predicament by anything other than ceasing to burn fossil fuels are nothing other than hot air.

All proposals to fix thermal imbalance by screening or otherwise reducing insolation are wet dreams of technophiles.

After reading Brutus’s recent comments here I did a long hard look at myself and found that at some point I turned into a misanthrope. It’s been pieces like this one about population that slowly chipped away at any concern I’ve got for the human species.

What I find ironic is that this essence of this essay mimics much of what happens when the issue of population or exponential growth is raised around liberal left leaning groups and people. There is no problem, it is all about reallocating resources.

This essay follows similar massaging of the truth. The author used the percentage of population increase which when put on charts look as if there is a decrease. She purposely avoided the chart, a comment on that threat supplied the missing chart, which clearly shows population going up in numbers. It’s another case of using percentages to make a case when without providing the actual underlying numbers tells a vastly different tale than reality.

And what upsets me the most is that this is the information most people gravitate towards as it validates there continued behavior of breeding. Brutus raised the point that at every opportunity when we could have taken a different path we consciously went that way. In the end aren’t we all as individuals responsible for where we wound up?

Thom Hartman who should know better displayed his lack of understanding or knowledge about Malthus, Albert Bartlett and exponential growth in his recent interviews with Guy McPherson. He actually dismissed Malthus and brought up the bet between Simon and Ehrlich and stated that Simon won. I was enraged. This is considered reporting, journalism, objective reporting. This is supposed to be better than Fox News or other MSM outlets. Hartman didn’t put that bet into the wider context it needed. It wasn’t like a baseball game which is limited to a particular span of time where one team wins.

The bet between Simon and Ehrlich was over 10 years and then the bet is declared over and a winner declared. Only the world doesn’t work the way a baseball game does. It could and did take longer than 10 years to play out and there was no provision in the bet to adjust the ending date even thought it was focusing on some pretty important issues.

In the short run (10 years) it appears as if Simon won, in the long run it’s clearly Ehrlich who was the “winner.” Yet each and every time the best is raised by someone it as if the world and time stopped when the bet ended. Hey, why let reality get in the way of something so dumb as a bet of this nature. It’s only the planet earth as compared to a baseball game. What’s more important? Oh, silly me, baseball of course and being a winner, not a quitter.

For merely mentioning this bet without providing time to actually develop a conversation allowing it to be fleshed out Hartman ought to hand his head in shame.

A British environmental organisation that has reviewed the draft of a forthcoming UN IPCC report on mitigating climate change has questioned many of the document’s recommendations as deeply flawed.

Dr Rachel Smolker, co-director of Biofuelwatch, said that the report’s embrace of “largely untested” and “very risky” technologies like bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS), will “exacerbate” climate change, agricultural problems, water scarcity, soil erosion and energy challenges, “rather than improving them.”

A leaked draft of the as yet unpublished report by Working Group 3 (WG3) of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to be officially released in mid-April, was obtained by the Guardian. Dr Smolker, a behavioural ecologist and biofuels expert, said that the alarming impacts of climate change identified by the IPCC’s Working Groups 1 and 2 would “worsen” as a consequence of such “false solutions” which have been increasingly criticised in the scientific literature.

Avoiding “overshoot”

The IPCC projects that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide emissions are unlikely to stabilise at 450 parts per million (ppm), accepted by the international community as the safe limit to ensure that global average temperatures do not exceed the 2 degrees Celsius danger level. It is more likely that concentrations could “overshoot” to around 550 ppm (if not higher by other less conservative projections). The leaked draft concludes that “essentially any” emissions target can be achieved “regardless of the near‐term path” of overshoot “by shifting emissions reductions to the future”:

“There are no published scenarios depicting a pathway returning to 450 CO2‐e [emissions] by century’s end without a negative emissions option when delayed participation is imposed. The vast majority of published 450 CO2‐e scenarios involve overshoot during the century and include a negative emissions technology.”

The draft thus recommends “carbon negative” energy technologies that might help to draw down carbon from the atmosphere. These include “large scale utilisation of BECCS”; coal and natural gas with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) – carbon emitted from burning fossil fuels is captured and injected underground where it is stored indefinitely; nuclear power; and large hydroelectric plants.

Carbon capture, or multiplier?

The problem, Biofuelwatch’s co-director said, is that there is no scientific consensus on whether these technologies actually work. CCS technology is already being used to facilitate intensified fossil fuel exploitation. In bioenergy, it has involved “capture of fermentation in ethanol refineries”:

“… so far much of carbon captured from bioenergy and other processes is ultimately used for Enhanced Oil Recovery – injected into depleted oil wells to create pressure enough to force remaining difficult to access oil out. This can hardly be considered ‘sequestration’ or an effective approach to solving the climate problem.”

She added that “burning wood for electricity and heat releases up to 150% as much CO2 per unit of energy generation than does coal” excluding emissions from “deforestation, harvesting and transportation.”

According to Dr Smolker, CCS cannot be viewed as “carbon negative” due to “the high costs, and associated high added energy demand for capture, transport, compression and injection.” Even more problematic, she said, is that there is “little real world testing” of whether CO2 pumped into underground cavities “will remain in situ” indefinitely, or be released, which she describes as “a dangerous gamble.”

Biofuelwatch also criticised the IPCC draft report’s recommendation of large-scale bioenergy projects. Bioenergy “should be considered a driver” of emissions from agriculture, forestry and other land use, Smolker said, “not a means of mitigation.”

The growing use of bioenergy as a substitute for fossil fuels is encroaching increasingly on land use, and in turn escalating food prices, intensifying land grabbing, and increasing demand for crops, livestock, wood and so on:

“Lands and ecosystems cannot at the same time both provide large quantities of biomass for bioenergy, and still securely act as ‘carbon sinks.’ It is not possible to have it both ways.”

Currently, just under 40% of US corn production is dedicated to ethanol although it provides just “a pittance of transport energy.” The large areas of land required for meaningful bioenergy production means it would simultaneously undermine food production while contributing to “escalating food prices.” Although the IPCC proposes bioenergy as the solution to renewable energy, “it can never provide more than a tiny fraction towards the current and projected growth in demand for energy.”

Broken climate needs fixing

Stephen Salter, a professor emeritus of engineering design at the University of Edinburgh who has proposed cloud enhancement as one mechanism of geoengineering to address climate change, said that given the import of dangerous warming, techniques to reduce carbon in the atmosphere must be part of the toolbox. But he said the focus should be on the Arctic

“Those working on geoengineering are largely doing so reluctantly. The concern is that we need to ensure technology is available in case events occur more quickly than expected. The IPCC has not fully accounted for certain feedbacks involving black carbon, methane release, and the rapid loss of the Arctic summer sea ice. A technique like marine cloud brightening by spraying seawater onto clouds to increase their reflectivity, could save the sea ice and help cool the climate with relatively little side-effects that can be controlled with careful application.”

But other geoengineering techniques suffer from less certainty, said Prof Salter, who is a member of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG). “Many major proposals suffer from debilitating costs and practicalities, and would take too long – up to a century or more – to work. And their risks are less understood.”

Prof Stuart Haszeldine, a geoscientist also at the University of Edinburgh specialising in CCS, said:

“Ultimately a full, immediate transition to renewables is the right imperative, but it cannot happen overnight due to the engineering costs and practicalities. So we must reduce our carbon emissions while we are still relying on fossil fuels. Our current emissions trajectory is heading for catastrophe. CCS would allow us to draw down emissions during the transition to renewables.

Every component of CCS has been practiced separately in the industry for decades, so putting them altogether to minimise our carbon footprint makes sense. Several large-scale commercial CCS enterprises will become operational this year, such as the coal-fired plant in Kemper County.

100% renewable transition in 15 years: feasible?

Danielle Paffard of the Centre for Alternative Technology’s Zero Carbon Britain project, however, voiced further reservations: “BECCS isn’t useful as a central feature of a climate mitigation strategy, due to the scale of current electricity demand, and requires an enormous reduction of demand to be viable. Any proposal to rely primarily on biomass for baseload electricity generation is never sensible.” Salter, Haszeldine and Paffard have not seen the draft IPCC mitigation report.

In particular, Paffard criticised carbon capture for fossil fuel power plants as a “red herring”:

“We can’t hope to simply run over a carbon precipice and pulls ourselves back. Government targets must be much more ambitious. Our research has shown that we can run modern societies without relying on fossil fuels, and that transitioning to net zero carbon emissions by 2030 is technologically and economically feasible with the right approach.”

Despite reservations, Paffard acknowledged a limited but “very important” role for BECCS. Other forms of carbon capture such as peatland conversion, biochar, and extensive reforestation will be “crucial” for energy transition, she said:

“Biomass does have the potential to be very destructive, but if used sparingly it has a place as part of a wider strategy involving renewables, to create synthetic fuels useful for industry and transport. Bioenergy is important as a flexible backup to address long-term energy storage due to the intermittency and variability of renewable sources – but its use must be sustainable, based on ‘second generation’ non-food crops [e.g. forest and crop residues, municipal and construction waste], not encroach on land-use for food, and combined with extensive reforestation.”

The IPCC draft report does emphasise the need to dramatically ramp up solar and wind power, pointing out the superior “technical potential” of solar compared to other renewables.

Economic straitjacket?

Dr Smolker of Biofuelwatch, in contrast, said that the IPCC’s central emphasis on biofuels with carbon capture is a “dangerous distraction” from the task of “deeply altering our entire relationship to energy consumption.” She highlighted an unwillingness to recognise the “fundamental link between ‘endless growth economics’ and ecological destruction.”

Working Group 3, she said, lacks sufficient expertise to assess the merits of its recommended technologies. Many critical assessments of bioenergy “come from scientists with a background in ecology and related disciplines and those are barely represented within the IPCC” – WG3 is staffed largely by economists and engineers:

“The underlying assumption appears to be that business as usual [BAU] economic growth must be sustained, and industry and corporate profits must be protected and maintained. But if we focus on ‘BAU economics’, seeking and accepting only bargain basement options for addressing global warming – the costs will be far more severe.”

Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed

A British environmental organisation that has reviewed the draft of a forthcoming UN IPCC report on mitigating climate change has questioned many of the document’s recommendations as deeply flawed.

Dr Rachel Smolker, co-director of Biofuelwatch, said that the report’s embrace of “largely untested” and “very risky” technologies like bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS), will “exacerbate” climate change, agricultural problems, water scarcity, soil erosion and energy challenges, “rather than improving them.”

A leaked draft of the as yet unpublished report by Working Group 3 (WG3) of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to be officially released in mid-April, was obtained by the Guardian. Dr Smolker, a behavioural ecologist and biofuels expert, said that the alarming impacts of climate change identified by the IPCC’s Working Groups 1 and 2 would “worsen” as a consequence of such “false solutions” which have been increasingly criticised in the scientific literature.

Avoiding “overshoot”

The IPCC projects that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide emissions are unlikely to stabilise at 450 parts per million (ppm), accepted by the international community as the safe limit to ensure that global average temperatures do not exceed the 2 degrees Celsius danger level. It is more likely that concentrations could “overshoot” to around 550 ppm (if not higher by other less conservative projections). The leaked draft concludes that “essentially any” emissions target can be achieved “regardless of the near‐term path” of overshoot “by shifting emissions reductions to the future”:

“There are no published scenarios depicting a pathway returning to 450 CO2‐e [emissions] by century’s end without a negative emissions option when delayed participation is imposed. The vast majority of published 450 CO2‐e scenarios involve overshoot during the century and include a negative emissions technology.”

The draft thus recommends “carbon negative” energy technologies that might help to draw down carbon from the atmosphere. These include “large scale utilisation of BECCS”; coal and natural gas with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) – carbon emitted from burning fossil fuels is captured and injected underground where it is stored indefinitely; nuclear power; and large hydroelectric plants.

Carbon capture, or multiplier?

The problem, Biofuelwatch’s co-director said, is that there is no scientific consensus on whether these technologies actually work. CCS technology is already being used to facilitate intensified fossil fuel exploitation. In bioenergy, it has involved “capture of fermentation in ethanol refineries”:

“… so far much of carbon captured from bioenergy and other processes is ultimately used for Enhanced Oil Recovery – injected into depleted oil wells to create pressure enough to force remaining difficult to access oil out. This can hardly be considered ‘sequestration’ or an effective approach to solving the climate problem.”

She added that “burning wood for electricity and heat releases up to 150% as much CO2 per unit of energy generation than does coal” excluding emissions from “deforestation, harvesting and transportation.”

According to Dr Smolker, CCS cannot be viewed as “carbon negative” due to “the high costs, and associated high added energy demand for capture, transport, compression and injection.” Even more problematic, she said, is that there is “little real world testing” of whether CO2 pumped into underground cavities “will remain in situ” indefinitely, or be released, which she describes as “a dangerous gamble.”

Biofuelwatch also criticised the IPCC draft report’s recommendation of large-scale bioenergy projects. Bioenergy “should be considered a driver” of emissions from agriculture, forestry and other land use, Smolker said, “not a means of mitigation.”

The growing use of bioenergy as a substitute for fossil fuels is encroaching increasingly on land use, and in turn escalating food prices, intensifying land grabbing, and increasing demand for crops, livestock, wood and so on:

“Lands and ecosystems cannot at the same time both provide large quantities of biomass for bioenergy, and still securely act as ‘carbon sinks.’ It is not possible to have it both ways.”

Currently, just under 40% of US corn production is dedicated to ethanol although it provides just “a pittance of transport energy.” The large areas of land required for meaningful bioenergy production means it would simultaneously undermine food production while contributing to “escalating food prices.” Although the IPCC proposes bioenergy as the solution to renewable energy, “it can never provide more than a tiny fraction towards the current and projected growth in demand for energy.”

Broken climate needs fixing

Stephen Salter, a professor emeritus of engineering design at the University of Edinburgh who has proposed cloud enhancement as one mechanism of geoengineering to address climate change, said that given the import of dangerous warming, techniques to reduce carbon in the atmosphere must be part of the toolbox. But he said the focus should be on the Arctic

:

“Those working on geoengineering are largely doing so reluctantly. The concern is that we need to ensure technology is available in case events occur more quickly than expected. The IPCC has not fully accounted for certain feedbacks involving black carbon, methane release, and the rapid loss of the Arctic summer sea ice. A technique like marine cloud brightening by spraying seawater onto clouds to increase their reflectivity, could save the sea ice and help cool the climate with relatively little side-effects that can be controlled with careful application.”

But other geoengineering techniques suffer from less certainty, said Prof Salter, who is a member of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG). “Many major proposals suffer from debilitating costs and practicalities, and would take too long – up to a century or more – to work. And their risks are less understood.”

Prof Stuart Haszeldine, a geoscientist also at the University of Edinburgh specialising in CCS, said:

“Ultimately a full, immediate transition to renewables is the right imperative, but it cannot happen overnight due to the engineering costs and practicalities. So we must reduce our carbon emissions while we are still relying on fossil fuels. Our current emissions trajectory is heading for catastrophe. CCS would allow us to draw down emissions during the transition to renewables.

Every component of CCS has been practiced separately in the industry for decades, so putting them altogether to minimise our carbon footprint makes sense. Several large-scale commercial CCS enterprises will become operational this year, such as the coal-fired plant in Kemper County.

100% renewable transition in 15 years: feasible?

Danielle Paffard of the Centre for Alternative Technology’s Zero Carbon Britain project, however, voiced further reservations: “BECCS isn’t useful as a central feature of a climate mitigation strategy, due to the scale of current electricity demand, and requires an enormous reduction of demand to be viable. Any proposal to rely primarily on biomass for baseload electricity generation is never sensible.” Salter, Haszeldine and Paffard have not seen the draft IPCC mitigation report.

In particular, Paffard criticised carbon capture for fossil fuel power plants as a “red herring”:

“We can’t hope to simply run over a carbon precipice and pulls ourselves back. Government targets must be much more ambitious. Our research has shown that we can run modern societies without relying on fossil fuels, and that transitioning to net zero carbon emissions by 2030 is technologically and economically feasible with the right approach.”

Despite reservations, Paffard acknowledged a limited but “very important” role for BECCS. Other forms of carbon capture such as peatland conversion, biochar, and extensive reforestation will be “crucial” for energy transition, she said:

“Biomass does have the potential to be very destructive, but if used sparingly it has a place as part of a wider strategy involving renewables, to create synthetic fuels useful for industry and transport. Bioenergy is important as a flexible backup to address long-term energy storage due to the intermittency and variability of renewable sources – but its use must be sustainable, based on ‘second generation’ non-food crops [e.g. forest and crop residues, municipal and construction waste], not encroach on land-use for food, and combined with extensive reforestation.”

The IPCC draft report does emphasise the need to dramatically ramp up solar and wind power, pointing out the superior “technical potential” of solar compared to other renewables.

Economic straitjacket?

Dr Smolker of Biofuelwatch, in contrast, said that the IPCC’s central emphasis on biofuels with carbon capture is a “dangerous distraction” from the task of “deeply altering our entire relationship to energy consumption.” She highlighted an unwillingness to recognise the “fundamental link between ‘endless growth economics’ and ecological destruction.”

Working Group 3, she said, lacks sufficient expertise to assess the merits of its recommended technologies. Many critical assessments of bioenergy “come from scientists with a background in ecology and related disciplines and those are barely represented within the IPCC” – WG3 is staffed largely by economists and engineers:

“The underlying assumption appears to be that business as usual [BAU] economic growth must be sustained, and industry and corporate profits must be protected and maintained. But if we focus on ‘BAU economics’, seeking and accepting only bargain basement options for addressing global warming – the costs will be far more severe.”

Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed

I made the mistake of watching the whole episode from a link at NBL, which had 30 mins. of shouting and advertisements to make RT news look cool before getting to the Guy McPherson interview. Thom Hartmann certainly covers stories of interest to us here at Collapse, but like Abby Martin, I’m not sure he really understands them. It’s clear they both prompt their interview subjects with the right code words and repeat phrases with a modicum of relevance, but it seems like the content passes through them like too much beer consumed on a pub crawl.

Brutus’s thoughts echo my own as I wrote above in a comment and am pasting here merely regarding Hartman’s mentioning the Simon -Ehrlich bet. There were a few other items mentioned during that interchange that led me to concur that neither Hartman nor Martin really get it.

Thom Hartman who should know better displayed his lack of understanding or knowledge about Malthus, Albert Bartlett and exponential growth in his recent interviews with Guy McPherson. He actually dismissed Malthus and brought up the bet between Simon and Ehrlich and stated that Simon won. I was enraged. This is considered reporting, journalism, objective reporting. This is supposed to be better than Fox News or other MSM outlets. Hartman didn’t put that bet into the wider context it needed. It wasn’t like a baseball game which is limited to a particular span of time where one team wins.

The bet between Simon and Ehrlich was over 10 years and then the bet is declared over and a winner declared. Only the world doesn’t work the way a baseball game does. It could and did take longer than 10 years to play out and there was no provision in the bet to adjust the ending date even thought it was focusing on some pretty important issues.

In the short run (10 years) it appears as if Simon won, in the long run it’s clearly Ehrlich who was the “winner.” Yet each and every time the best is raised by someone it as if the world and time stopped when the bet ended. Hey, why let reality get in the way of something so dumb as a bet of this nature. It’s only the planet earth as compared to a baseball game. What’s more important? Oh, silly me, baseball of course and being a winner, not a quitter.

For merely mentioning this bet without providing time to actually develop a conversation allowing it to be fleshed out Hartman ought to hand his head in shame.

Well, that makes three of us. This guy is even worse than the English chap that interviewed Guy with a woman co-host and neither of them actually absorbed what Guy was saying. The man said at one point near the end, “The future’s bright, isn’t it?” full of hope that we’re going to somehow change the outcome Guy said was inevitable.

Hartman seems to try to deflate the message at the end so it looks like “just another conversation with Great Minds!” [Next week, Sarah Palin] The mainstream just doesn’t want to spook the herd and will do what they have to do in order to maintain the status quo – “hey, we got ad time to sell here pal.”

i’m surprised the message is even starting to get out and encourage Guy to do as many of these as he can. No matter what, the collapse is under way. All you have to do is look around and pay attention. Soon, it will become obvious to everyone, probably before 2020. That’s when TSHTF, imho.

I remember watching Last Hours when it came out and thinking that someone with reach is finally paying attention. Maybe he is, but that doesn’t quite comport with his incongruous tone and irrelevant remarks when interviewing Guy McPherson (which Guy let’s pass). I get the same weird vibe when watching a Rachel Maddow broadcast. She and Abby Martin and Thom Hartmann clearly enjoy being the focus of attention no matter the abject nature of the news at issue. It’s creepy and guileless. They also take pains to position themselves as newsbreakers, which is hardly distinguishable from newmakers. RT News might be the best of the bunch, but they’re still journalists and media creatures — with Att-i-TUDE no less. In contrast, Max Keiser clearly gets what he’s reporting, but his Sam-Kinison-screaming weirdness makes him nearly unwatchable, too. There’s a reason people get their news sugarcoated with humor at The Daily Show.

Agreed…I could only get through about 5 minutes of the McPherson interview and seldom watch Hartmann, Maddow, Martin or Keiser. But taken on its own, I thought Last Hours a good effort; which surprised me. Only 111,000 views though: which doesn’t surprise me.
btw…I have wished I had the time to comment in depth on your post which mentions Julian Jaynes’ book.

Replying this way to avoid being marginalized…gets very thin & weird over there.
I understand this very well, Tom. I’m here every damn day…and NBL…and DOTE…and, on & on…every damn day. I know the score(s).
There are solutions but they are way far out of human hands. There is far more going on than any of us can see, no matter how awake we think we are.
My point was that I thought Last Hours was well done.

I’m a delta slide guy for over 50 years. Lowell was..and is.. one of my favorites Totally unique style..and a terrible loss. Saw them live locally in ’71…fantastic…burned in my memory.

Interesting interview with Canadian journalist Andrew Nikiforuk, on the idea that slavery never really ended, it was just transferred to machines. And, just like before, almost nobody is willing to be an abolitionist – in fact, it’s heresy and madness to even contemplate. {ahem}

Oh that’s great – makes it crystal clear. I always said that using fossil fuels for simple tasks like walking somewhere (to save time) or especially (my pet peeve) mowing lawns was a complete waste of a diminishing energy source. Of course no one is listening, and as a result – I do it too! Hypocrisy!

So the lesson the serious student of climate science gets to take away from this history is: nobody cares, they’re not listening, they don’t want to change (laziness, enculturation), there’s too much money to be made, ingrained wrong paradigm prevents the reception of your message, don’t bother, it’s over.

Fascinating how conclusions we are drawing today were foretold again and again only to be ignored or swept under the rug. Santayana’s remark that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” might apply here but would need a reformulation, which I won’t attempt.

Although not about pumping CO2 into the air, another fellow I recently learned about who accurately assessed the scarcity of resources amid development and population growth was John Wesley Powell, who worked for the U.S. Geological Survey and warned that the Southwest could not support a sizeable population due to its aridity. So what do we have now? Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, and most of south central California, all drawing water from the Colorado River and dams/reservoirs built along its length to manage that resource. It’s not working out too well, as the current drought demonstrates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley_Powell

From the same source (a Harper’s Magazine article titled “Razing Arizona” — behind a paywall) I also learned of what’s called a hydraulic (or hydrological) empire, which centers around bureaucratic control of a single scarce resource: water. Examples include the Indus and Nile River systems, and to a lesser extent, the Yellow River system in China. The American Southwest is a more recent example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_empire

[besides the author’s commentary, it’s sprinkled with great quotes like these]

Zombification of America

“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited

How can you not see the parallels between American society and the zombies in the Walking Dead? Walk down any city street in America and you see hordes shuffling along staring with blank faces and glazed over eyes at their iGadgets. Black Friday is identical to flinging a freshly slaughtered hog in front of the flesh eating zombies. Americans flock to malls across our apocalyptic suburban sprawl landscape and proceed to stampede, gouge, and punch their way to an fantastic bargain on a Chinese slave labor produced microwave they must have to cook their toxic frankenfood created by one of our corporate food conglomerates. The Black Friday crowds actually make the zombies from the Walking Dead seem well behaved. While the American zombies are shambling through superficial lives of pleasure seeking, mass consumption, and a delusional faith in debt based wealth, there is still a minority of rational thinking people who can control their impulses and resist the disease devouring our culture.

“Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things.” ― Philip Slater

[and on collapse]

Collapse Will Be Sudden

“That’s the thing about the collapse of civilization. It never happens according to plan – there’s no slavering horde of zombies. No actinic flash of thermonuclear war. No Earth-shuddering asteroid. The end comes in unforeseen ways; the stock market collapses, and then the banks, and then there is no food in the supermarkets, or the communications system goes down completely and inevitably, and previously amiable co-workers find themselves wrestling over the last remaining cookie that someone brought in before all the madness began.” ― Mark A. Rayner – The Fridgularity

Yes, I saw that. So glad you posted it, otherwise is seems to be just Mike and me most of the time, with occasional inputs from others. And surely there are more than a dozen fully awake people in the world.

I have managed to get one more person to visit the site regularly.

There is still a lot going on in NP, and I have had much to do over recent days, with another unexpected matter suddenly thrown at me today.

Many matters will be resolved by July.

In the meantime, heavy rain is falling, which helps me personally while allowing the system to persist a it longer.

NZ dollar back near 87 cents, gold up, oil up, Nikkei down, several business in town in the process of closing, and many hanging on by their fingertips, as am I.

First Official Climate Change Refugees Evacuate Their Island Homes for Good

The day has finally come, and a critical landmark in the saga of global climate change is occurring as we speak—and hardly anyone has noticed. The Carteret Islanders of Papua New Guinea have become the world’s first entire community to be displaced by climate change. They’re the first official refugees of global warming–and they’re packing up their lives to move out of the way of ever-rising waters that threaten to overtake their homes and crops. The island they call home will be completely underwater by 2015. This story first broke a couple years ago, when it was first suggested that these islanders could become climate change refugees. But now that it’s actually happening–seems no one’s paying attention. And though the scenario isn’t as apocalyptic as some might imagine, life for the islanders has indeed all but become impossible on the Cartarets:

On the Carterets, king tides have washed away their crops and rising sea levels poisoned those that remain with salt. The people have been forced to move.

That report comes from the Ecologist, one of only a handful of media outlets to cover the story, and the only one to have a reporter on hand to witness the evacuation. This is what he saw when he arrived on the scene:

The men climbed silently from the boat and into the shallows. They splashed towards us, carrying almost nothing. From beside me, others who had come to meet them walked out quietly in welcome. The air was still, both sad and happy, which seemed to suit the moment. That single boat carrying these five men is the first wave in what is, as far as I can tell, the world’s first official evacuation of an entire people because of climate change.

Thus begins an unfortunate exodus, however small, of a people whose lives have been directly threatened by climate change. And though the entire community appears only to be comprised of 40 large families (around 2,000 people), the loss of their homes and way of life is still a tragic occurrence. The displaced villagers are already at work building new homes near a village on another larger island, on higher ground.

And this is certain to be merely the first such community to be forced into such action—with sea levels continuing their steady rise, and a distinct lack of meaningful action from governments of rich, polluting nations, more helpless communities are sure to be displaced.

Though some would blame the islands’ sinking on shifting tectonic plates, Australia’s National Tide Facility has measured an annual rise of 8.2 mm in sea level on the islands in every year they’ve monitored—which, coupled with climate change’s propensity towards making weather patterns more severe, places climate change as at least a major contributor to the island’s submersion. We should get a camera crew down there—give some hard, undeniable evidence to the remaining climate change deniers: this is what can happen. And this is what will happen, eventually, to us too.

Showtime aired their first spot ad about a month ago and gave the production its own youtube channel. I found this coming production fascinating in many respects, including this one…

“About 90 days after the show airs, DVD sales and electronic sell-through viewings, along with on-demand options, are to begin.” Source below.

Fk’n marketing. As Gnossis said almost 50 years ago, “there’s always a worm in the image, munching away”

I, and 80% of the american population, do not subscribe to showtime. I don’t subscribe to any premium channels, so I’ll have to come at this sideways…just like I did with True Detective. (Fabulous, btw) Some are sure to attempt uploading episodes to youtube…just as sure to be yanked in short order.

Cameron, Schwarzenegger and Weintraub have a combined net worth of over 1 billion. Harrison Ford adds another 250 million. Add em all up and you get…who th’fk knows.

Don’t get me wrong…I hope it’s great…there are all those other aspects. But not allowing free access…this irks me.

I didn’t believe climate change until I saw Don Cheadle drive into Podunk Texas to hear how God had driven a meat packing plant out of business with His drought. How smart the producers were to line up stars to speak to the drooling proles like me who otherwise would have skipped it for Charles in Charge re-runs. I’ve watched one-half of the first episode, and I’m not sure I’ll find the motivation to watch one minute more. I didn’t really expect this series to be a game-changer for the skeptics or apathetics; but I was to feel some sort of connection. But you said it – F’ing marketing!

The Brutally Dishonest Attacks On Showtime’s Landmark Series On Climate Change

The good news is the video of episode one of Showtime’s climate series, “Years Of Living Dangerously,” has been getting great reviews in the New York Times and elsewhere.

The bad news is the Times has published an error-riddled hit-job op-ed on the series that is filled with myths at odds with both the climate science and social science literature. For instance, the piece repeats the tired and baseless claim that Al Gore’s 2006 movie “An Inconvenient Truth” polarized the climate debate, when the peer-reviewed data says the polarization really jumped in 2009 (see chart above from “The Sociological Quarterly”).

As I said, “Years Of Living Dangerously” — the landmark 9-part Showtime docu-series produced by the legendary James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jerry Weintraub — has been getting great reviews. Andy Revkin, often a critic of climate messaging, wrote in the NY Times Monday:

… a compellingly fresh approach to showing the importance of climate hazards to human affairs, the role of greenhouse gases in raising the odds of some costly and dangerous outcomes and — perhaps most important — revealing the roots of the polarizing divisions in society over this issue….

George Marshall, “an expert on climate and communication,” — who is also often a critic of climate messaging — wrote me:

What impressed me about the two episodes I watched was the respect that it showed to conservatives, evangelicals and ordinary working people…. it is still the best documentary I have seen.

The New York Times op-ed is from the founders of the Breakthrough Institute — the same group where political scientist Roger Pielke, Jr. is a Senior Fellow. It pushes the same argument that Pielke made in his fivethirtyeight piece — which was so widely criticized and debunked that Nate Silver himself admitted its myriad flaws and ran a debunking piece by an MIT climate scientist.

Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, two widely debunked eco-critics who run The Breakthrough Institute (TBI), begin by asserting “IF you were looking for ways to increase public skepticism about global warming, you could hardly do better than the forthcoming nine-part series on climate change and natural disasters, starting this Sunday on Showtime.” But they never cite anything other than the trailer in making their case, dismissing the entire enterprise on the basis of 2 minutes of clips!

They base their entire argument on a misrepresentation of climate science and a misrepresentation of social science. They assert:

“But claims linking the latest blizzard, drought or hurricane to global warming simply can’t be supported by the science.”

I asked one of the country’s top climatologist, Michael Mann, to respond to that, and he replied:

The statement is disingenuous, very carefully worded to imply doubt where there is none. The term “the latest” is used as a sleight of hand. Of course, we don’t attribute individual meteorological events to climate change in a purely causal manner, because the link is statistical. It is like the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, or the link between a baseball player taking steroids and the number of home runs he hits in the season. We don’t talk about any one home run being caused by the steroids. Its the wrong question, the wrong framing. We know that statistically, the player hit more home runs because of the steroids. And, analogously, we know that we’re seeing more severe and prolonged heat waves and drought, extreme flooding, and more devastating hurricanes, because of human-caused climate change. Just the opposite of what the authors appear to want you to think.

We need good faith discussions of climate risks in leading media outlets like the New York Times. To quote Winston Churchill, we’re living in an age of consequences. There is no room for misleading screeds which seem intended at distracting and confusing the public about human-caused climate change at a time when it poses a critical threat to our planet.

In fact, the show isn’t about “the latest blizzard, drought or hurricane.” It does show the impact of some specific record-breaking extreme weather events that have been documented in the scientific literature to have been worsened by climate change (as I discuss here). These include the Hurricane Sandy storm surge, the record Texas drought and heat wave of 2011, and the drying out of the Mediterranean, particularly Syria.

TBI’s Nordhaus and Shellenberger assert of human-caused warming, “there is little evidence that this warming is increasing the loss of life or the economic costs of natural disasters.” If that argument sounds both very familiar but wrong, that’s because it is. TBI Senior Fellow Roger Pielke, Jr. made the same exact argument in his opening piece for Nate Silver’s website fivethirtyeight, which quickly became one of the most debunked posts of the year.

Climate scientists and others so thoroughly refuted the piece that Nate Silver himself admitted its myriad flaws bus and ran a response piece by MIT climatologist Kerry Emanuel eviscerating Pielke.

Why the NY Times would publish an article pushing such a widely debunked scientific thesis is truly inexplicable.

Then we have the article’s untenable social science. The authors assert that one reason we know that “Years Of Living Dangerously” will fail is:

Al Gore’s 2006 documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” popularized the idea that today’s natural disasters are increasing in severity and frequency because of human-caused global warming. It also contributed to public backlash and division.

As an important aside, back in October 2007, the authors took a completely different view of the effect of Gore’s move: “Consider that despite extensive publicity, Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth,” had almost no impact on public opinion. Seriously.

TBI bases its claims on a few cherry-picked polling results, which appear to justify whatever conclusions they want to push. Unsurprisingly, the peer-reviewed social science literature concludes differently. The McCright and Dunlap study cited above makes crystal clear that the polarization jumped in 2009, long after Gore’s 2006 movie. If anything, that chart suggests polarization decreased after the movie.

I asked Prof. Robert Brulle, whom the NY Times has called “an expert on environmental communications,” about TBI’s assertion. He replied:

This editorial ignores the peer reviewed analysis of the impact of An Inconvenient Truth. This research clearly shows that polarization in Congress declined and concern about climate change increased during the period surrounding the release of this movie.

As evidence, Brulle directed me to his detailed 2012 study on the subject (discussed here), which aggregates data from 6 different polling organizations precisely to avoid the kinds of mistakes so commonly found in hand-waving op-eds.

The bottom line is that there just is no polling data or social science scholarship to support the charge that Al Gore’s movie began the polarization of the climate debate — and there is much polling data and scholarship to the contrary. I’ve asked many leading experts on social science and public opinion — including Stanford’s Jon Krosnick as well as McCright and Dunlap, authors of “The politicization of climate change and polarization in the American public’s views of global warming, 2001–2010″ — and they all agree the data don’t support this myth. Can we kill it once and for all?

The rest of TBI’s analysis of what they call “a fear-based approach” to messaging is also flawed. They assert:

In a controlled laboratory experiment published in Psychological Science in 2010, researchers were able to use “dire messages” about global warming to increase skepticism about the problem.

As I explained at the time, that study, if it proves anything, finds that the strongest possible science-based messaging is effective. Climate hawks should feel confident explaining to the public as clearly as possible the dire consequences if we fail to take action to reduce emissions together with the myriad cost-effective solutions available today that make averting catastrophe so cheap compared to the alternative.

TBI also cites a 2009 study in the journal Science Communication as making their case against the 9-part TV series they haven’t seen. Yet that study has this key finding:

The results demonstrate that communications approaches that take account of individuals’ personal points of reference (e.g., based on an understanding and appreciation of their values, attitudes, beliefs, local environment, and experiences) are more likely to meaningfully engage individuals with climate change.

I was not one of the producers of the show, but I have worked with them long enough to know that that sentence sums up their guiding philosophy. As George Marshall says, he thinks YEARS is the best climate documentary he’s seen in this regard.

I asked Revkin, who has generally been sympathetic to TBI, whether he stood by his positive review of the show. You can read his full response here. He sums up:

The bottom line? Episode 1 works. There’s more challenging terrain ahead in the series. I wish you all luck in navigating it and I see your effort as well worth trying.

The producers behind this series learned their craft at 60 Minutes and have 18 Emmys between them. They are the finest journalists I know, and they know how to tell stories “that take account of individuals’ personal points of reference.”

I hope that you will withhold judgment until they have had a chance to blow you away with what they have done, starting with Episode 1, which you can watch here. [above]

I started a blog post (at The Spiral Staircase) ranting about the program but haven’t yet completed it. It’s not the overall conclusion I object to (obviously) but turning collapse into celebrity activism. I should be done in a day or two. OTOH, maybe these rich celebs will turn out to be the real PTB, but I doubt it.

When I saw the name Schwarzenegger, I thought WTF? Isn’t he the guy with eight Hummers? This show has not been on my radar screen, and I don’t think I’d like to watch. The whole idea of “collapse entertainment” leaves me cold. There have been a lot of film showings in my region—I went to one called “The Wisdom to Survive” and I just found it pointless. I have run into young people on the blogs sometimes, and their response to AGW is: we have to make a film or we have to set up a website or we have to sign this online petition.. It’s the only thing some of them know how to do. Do you think the “stars” of the film, or the producers, ever stop to consider the irony that they are expecting people to sit around and watch cable while collapse is happening outside their door? Brutus, I am looking forward to your rant!

why on earth would earnest celebrity response to recognition of imminent disaster brought on by climate change be to put on a show (the Little Rascals response) with self-serving celebrity spin?
The same reason the local development non-profit’s response is “let’s put up a web site!” and my friend’s daughter’s response is “let’s drive across country and make videos” (in a biodiesel car, though.. that’s supposed to make it ok). And really we’re not much different, sitting here yakking online, which is what we were doing before we gave climate change a second thought. We’re all kinda doing what we want to do anyway—there’s no deep-down behavior change, is there, except among extreme outliers.

KM says “And surely there are more than a dozen fully awake people in the world.”

Sure there are – in fact, there might be thousands, or even millions. But here’s the thing: they’re ahead on the enlightenment curve. And once you’ve figured out the score, what is the point of complaining?

Our own host appears to be nearing that kind of conclusion. You can’t stop the train; energy must be dissipated, it’s embedded in the very physical makeup of the universe. Therefore, every day should be enjoyed simply because the particular arrangement of cells that makes up YOU is a transient and fleeting phenomena.

In that regard, I make a point of always maintaining my (prior) corporate appearance and keeping my thoughts to myself. What could it possibly serve to (a) put people on guard that I might be different; or (b) waste my time explaining topics they simply have no cognitive basis of understanding?

I know it might sound a little paternalistic, but it’s really a form of pity more than anything else. The sheep seem to intent on acquiring objects, or living their lives according to programmed ideals that benefit others, that it really is kind of sad.

So I just go about my business, knowing the clock is quickly running down, and thanking doG I’ve had a good run. Hell, I’ve not even that old, so I’m actually going to get a chance to see the looming shit storm hit full blast.

It’s not a matter of ‘complaining’; it’s a matter of trying to reduce the level of insanity that characterises society in general and decision-making in particular. It’s a matter of trying to reduce the suffering that characterises the present system, and trying to reduce the greatly increased level of suffering that will ensue when the system collapses if no preparation or mitigation is even attempted.

Saying nothing and doing nothing, passively getting aboard the railway wagon that is headed for the extermination camp, sitting passively on the journey, disrobing and walking obediently into the gas chamber suits many people. But not me.

Although energy must be consumed and dissipated as heat, there is absolutely no reason it has to be squandered at the rate that is presently occurring. There is absolutely no reason why the health and welfare of the general populace have to be rapidly degraded by those in a position to prevent such things, especially at the local level.

Although we cannot stop the train, we can slow it down and ensure the passengers do not suffer unnecessarily.

I used to think the same, but if most people don’t give a shit about the vulnerable while they still have resources what will happen when they start to hurt or even perceive themselves as not having enough? I see most people in the west and especially Americas as spoiled fucking babies with an astronomical sense of entitlement. I see major temper tantrums and punishing to come starting with the passengers in economy class.

I got some valuable perspective from watching that documentary, star-studded though it was (and except for Friedman, who I don’t think has any credibility, they didn’t do any harm to the presentation.

Thanks Mike.

It’s funny though, whenever that filming was done (it’s very current) it’s already obsolete. These people see how bad it is, are living it, and even though they see why it can’t stop (in forest example) they haven’t taken it to it’s logical conclusion yet.

They still don’t KNOW.

They’re getting the message loud and clear via their reality (17,000 acre farmer example) and seeing the consequences first hand (loss of well-paying jobs, property, tax rate increases by municipalities on the few remaining – which starts a death spiral as more people move out to avoid the taxes, giving up homes, etc.). They’re too busy reacting now to delve deeper, but it’ll sink in before long as things continue to decline and it becomes harder to survive (first, economically).

The scariest part was the Syrian clips – this is what happens when things get bad enough. People turn on each other, killing becomes common-place and changes your life forever. The survivors are scarred to the soul and mentally imbalanced as a result. War and violence of this type have that by-product.

The most heart-wrenching part was the destruction of the forest and attendant elephant herds. That shook me bad & I had to stop and walk around, be with my dogs for a while.

Knowing all of this is going to happen here in the not-too-distant future makes me tremble thinking about it. Now I know what those concentration camp victims must have felt like being marched to the “showers.”

It can really mess with your head. So I gotta keep things in focus and deal with today.

Jacob – I can see that you “know” because of your commentary on the various sites; I was merely pointing out that someone involved with the filming didn’t get the message when they posted that “call for solutions” nonsense.

Nice Feat story! I got to see them at a really tiny venue way back about that time. They were fantastic. Lowell George goes further back and I like the songs he wrote, hearing him play with various others. He did a duet once with Emmylou Harris.

The Demise of the U.S. Dollar and the Law of Unintended Consequences collide

Kevin Hester

April 9, 2014 at 1:10pm

More on my series on the demise of the U.S. Petro Dollar and the Political and hopefully not military consequences.

The only thing that has kept the U.S. Dollar afloat has been the position it has traditionally held as the Global Currency where Oil, the most expensive and widely traded of all commodities has and is traded, exclusively in U.S. Dollars.

Those days my friends are soon to be over.

Previously, Libya and Iraq began to trade oil in Euros and we know what happened to them! Both countries were bombed back in to the dark ages and Saddam, formerly an ally of the U.S. was hanged by Yankee puppets and Muammar Gadaffi died with a bayonet in his rectum and a body riddled with bullets.

Iran proposed trading it’s oil in Euros and has been demonised ever since even though it is a bastion of Democracy in a region sadly lacking any semblance of democratic ideals.

Now we move on to Russia and China. As trade expands between the ‘BRICS’ nations, (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and their near neighbours, why would you buy and sell these commodities in a ‘foreign’ currency?

Once a suitable framework is agreed, the need for the U.S. Dollar disappears somewhat like a fiat currency made profligate.

Parallel to these developments on the Petrodollar front has been the nefarious U.S. involvement in the Putsch that overthrew the, here it is again ” democratically- elected” government of Ukraine leading to the referendum in Crimea and the decision to cede from it’s amalgamation with Ukraine in 1954, imposed by Nikita Khrushchev.

I suspect the U.S decision to fund this Putsch will come back to haunt Russia, Ukraine, the U.S. and all of Europe. I sincerely hope I am wrong.

To dispel any doubts that the U.S. was behind the sponsorship of the neo-Nazi -led opposition to the elected government that had little more than a year in it’s term to run;

The straw that broke the camel’s back was the unbridled and reckless coup against the elected president of Ukraine by US and NATO, orchestrated by the US State Department and led by the war-monger Victoria Nuland, who openly admitted on CNN that the US had disbursed through such organisations as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) over US$ 5 Billion to facilitate the coup with the support of the oil giant Chevron.”

This was an unprecedented treachery, as a few weeks before the bloody coup, the relevant stakeholders had entered an agreement to preserve the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, brokered by Russia and endorsed by the EU.

Victoria Nuland could not and would not accept the checkmate and so she launched the bloody coup giving no choice to Russia but to support the self-determination of Crimea, where the majority of the citizens were Russians and where Russia’s Black Sea fleet was located.”

The US blatantly threatened Russia in her own backyard.

The rest as they say is history.

We teeter on the edge of two catastrophes.

The first is the possible outbreak of a hot war between the U.S. and a soon-to-be- surrounded Russia, led by Vladimir Putin who has been schooled in exactly this worst case scenario and has no doubt been planning and preparing for these times since he served his long apprenticeship in the K.G.B. in the heady days of the Soviet Union.

The demise of international currency status for the U.S. Dollar with the attendant consequences for a national economy that has survived on the life support afforded by quantitative easing, which as we all know, has historically seen the demise of all fiat currency’s in history.

For pity’s sake! – they had to invent a new term for printing money as the old one was so unpalatable!

The world we live in faces enormous challenges from run away climate change and now is the hour we need to be working together for the common goal of saving this world and all the species that live upon it.

Yet here we are squabbling over the very fossil fuels we simply cannot burn without incinerating our very own planet, the only one we have.

History will judge humans very badly, assuming we leave any planet to judge.

The U.S. has started provoking Russia at a level I have never witnessed in my lifetime, why the push now? Is it because they know that collapse is imminent?

Gloom Boom & Doom Report publisher Marc Faber warns Federal Reserve monetary bubble will burst in three years in a radio interview and discusses the fragile state of the US and the global financial system: how rising inflation will affect the average America; how soon the bubble will burst; and why gold and silver will triumph.

Faber gives it three years till the economy collapses.

I think he is being overly generous.

Here are a few highlights from the interview:

“The US is a country that likes to create trouble, but they don’t like to clean up things.”

“We’ve now been five years into the bull market and the US economy bottomed out in June 2009. We already had a crack-up boom—not in the economy of the typical household, but in the economy of the super-well-to-do people, whose asset prices rose dramatically and as a result created a huge wealth inequality.”

My view would be that we have already printed so much money, and to accelerate it will be bringing about numerous other problems, so my time frame is that the [bubble], maximum, will burst in three years’ time.”

“Once the collapse happens, the power of central banks will be curtailed greatly because people will realise who brought along first the Nasdaq bubble in 1999: The Federal Reserve. Who brought about the housing bubble between 2001 and 2007? The Federal Reserve. And who is bringing now along another great credit bubble and asset bubble? The Federal Reserve.”

“I don’t think that anything is very cheap, but if I have to compare different asset prices, say real estate, stocks, bonds, commodities, gold, art, and so forth—and old cars—then I think that gold and silver [are] relatively inexpensive because they have had big corrections already, and you should not forget that the global bond market now is over $100 trillion.”

There is some odious misogynist ideas in the discussion that this writer deplores – but we cannot throw out the dirty bathwater without losing the message,

My apologies for that.

The renewed animosity of the U.S. towards Iran in the last 15 years stems partially from Iran’s consideration of trading oil in Euros.

Doing so would be the next chink in the unravelling of the Dollar position as the world Currency.

“Iran and Russia have made progress towards an oil-for-goods deal sources said would be worth up to $20 billion, which would enable Tehran to boost vital energy exports in defiance of Western sanctions,” people familiar with the negotiations told Reuters.”

“In January Reuters reported Moscow and Tehran were discussing a barter deal that would see Moscow buy up to 500,000 barrels a day of Iranian oil in exchange for Russian equipment and goods.”

Once the U.S. dollar hegemony is broken or even called into question a new paradigm evolves.

The life support that has been ” quantitative easing” is immediately called into question once the dollar dependency is broken and alternative currencies are available.

Who would need to buy faux U.S. treasury notes when they could trade oil and other commodities in euros, roubles, yuan or BRICS- zone Pesos?

One way or another the fiat currency known as the dollar is doomed.

The batteries on the life support machine are running flat and when the U.S. orders more from the Chinese they will want paying in GOLD.

“US monetary policy considers that the dollar is here to stay forever, and that gold is no longer – and never again will be – the world’s ultimate money.”

“The governments of several nations around the world do not share the same conviction with regard to the permanence of the dollar. China invented irredeemable paper money – which is what the whole world uses today – some one thousand years ago, and several dynasties of Chinese emperors learned to their cost that paper money always degenerates into simple trash.”

“The Chinese government knows that the dollar will not be around forever. China is purchasing enormous amounts of gold to add to their huge pile of US Bonds in the reserves of the Bank of China; the government of China is more enlightened than the government of the US, because it is encouraging the Chinese to purchase gold and silver.”

“The US government tells the world that it possesses some 8,000 tonnes of gold; the fact that it cannot deliver physical gold held for Germany’s account belies the assurances regarding the physical gold stock of the US.”

“The situation for the US – and for the world – is dangerous: the US is like a ship with no lifeboats, because it is presumed to be unsinkable.”

“The US and its allies are allowing the Chinese and Asia in general, to take possession of huge amounts of gold every year, while the US, the UK and Europe are drained of gold by shipments to the East.”

See – The US Is like a ship With no lifeboats (full of suicidal bankers! _

U.S. dollar hegemony depends on the Major Global Economies continuing to trade fossil fuels and to a lesser degree gold and commodities using the until now omnipotent U.S.petrodollar.

It makes all the sense in the world for Russia and China to wean themselves from their dependence on the currency of the nation they appear to have the most philosophical conflict with.

The German Bundesbank announced that it had signed a memorandum of understanding to create a clearing and settlement center for yuan payments in Frankfurt, giving China even more influence on the European trade.

Germany is the biggest trade partner of China in Europe with a yearly turnover of more than 140 billion euros.

As the U.S. Federal Reserve continues inexorably down the road of quantitative easing, sooner rather than later, no one is going to want to be left holding that paper when they can see the value of those bonds unravelling before their eyes.

The batteries on the life support machine are running flat and when the U.S. orders more from the Chinese they will want to be paid in gold. “US monetary policy considers that the dollar is here to stay forever, and that gold is no longer – and never again will be – the world’s ultimate money.”

The governments of several nations around the world do not share the same conviction with regard to the permanence of the dollar. China invented irredeemable paper money – which is what the whole world uses today – some one thousand years ago, and several dynasties of Chinese emperors learned to their cost that paper money always degenerates into simple trash.”

“The Chinese government knows that the dollar will not be around forever. China is purchasing enormous amounts of gold to add to their huge pile of US Bonds in the reserves of the Bank of China; the government of China is more enlightened than the government of the US, because it is encouraging the Chinese to purchase gold and silver.”

“The US government tells the world that it possesses some 8,000 tonnes of gold; the fact that it cannot deliver physical gold held for Germany’s account belies the assurances regarding the physical gold stock of the US.”

“The situation for the US – and for the world – is dangerous: the US is like a ship with no lifeboats, because it is presumed to be unsinkable.”

“The US and its allies are allowing the Chinese and Asia in general, to take possession of huge amounts of gold every year, while the US, the UK and Europe are drained of gold by shipments to the East.”

New Zealand Joins China, Drops Bombshell On U.S. Dollar In New DirectTrade Agreement!…

There is something very weird about this development. The Prime Minister of NZ, John Key is a former Wall St Banker and Completely in the Pocket of the U.S. and he has made this agreement with China….. There will be something completely nefarious about this development as there always is with John Key and his Trade agreements.

I’m surprised and suspicious about this decision by the Prime Minister of New Zealand.

The P.M. John Key formerly worked for Meryl Lynch in New York and was sent back to NZ to privatise all state assets and sell them to his cohorts.

And then this happens on his watch?!

When Iran decided to set up a Oil Exchange in the Tehran trading Oil in Euros, the real acid came down on their country.

Is this the precursor for a move on NZ?

Kevin Hester is a New Zealand based anti-imperialist activists with 30 yrs involvement in the anti-apartheid struggle, the successful Anti-Nuclear Movement in New Zealand and the Pacific and anti-Imperialism generally

He has completed 16 Ocean Passages on yachts in the Pacific Ocean and has worked as a Delivery Skipper of Yachts in the Mediterranean and the Pacific.

He has worked extensively in Gt Britain, Europe and Africa.

His interest in politics was influenced from his youth, Born a member of the Irish diaspora to a family of Irish Republicans whose history was steeped in the overwhelming influence of British Imperialism in Ireland and the British Colonies

A friend of mine (who sees most of the big picture despite having no computer and never using the Internet) and I were discussing the culture of black which has taken hold in the district (and presumably elsewhere; I have not been out of the district for quite a while, almost everywhere else being worse than here).

Scientifically, black is the absence of colour, the ‘colour’ that receives and gives little back.

Psychologically, culturally and existentially, black is the colour associated with (in no particular order):

night -a time to be fearful of the unseen and unseeable

ignorance -being unenlightened

death -the Black Death plague

mourning -the widow in black

danger -black mambo, black widow spider

depression and suicide -a black mood

rogues and villains -traditionally the man dressed in white could be identified as the hero

evil -Satanic rites, witches, ghouls,

piracy -skull and cross bones on a black background

burglary -dressed in black to be inconspicuous at night

inconspicuousness -not wishing to be noticed

cheapness and mass production -you can have any colour as long as it’s black

grime and filth – Britain’s black cities

undisciplined mercenaries -Blackwater

particularly nasty fascist groups -Black-shirts

The reason I raise this is that although the All Blacks have been a national icon for around a century, there has been a surge in blackness which has been promoted by numerous organisations, which have adopted black as the prime colour for uniforms.

Although I had noticed myself, my friend raised the matter of the recent surge in the number of black vehicles, black being just about the worst colour there is for local conditions, overheating in the summer and particularly dangerous in dark, wet conditions which turn asphalt black, creating almost zero contrast. .

We have, until very recently, had very warm, dry weather. It has been particularly incongruous to see people of both sexes walking in the streets dressed head-to-foot in black. And I do not mean a few people, I mean a huge proportion of the order of 50%.

I am trying to figure out whether this phenomenon is self-imposed, in that people are depressed, suicidal, lacking confidence, caught up in a mood of self-imposed darkness, or whether there is something more sinister to all this.

That’s interesting. Black is associated with evil, aggression and dominance, the night and whatever predators lurk therein. Perhaps it’s fashion herding behavior or a new tribe subconsciously forming. But I think that maybe it is insecurity, everyone wants to seem tougher, fear invoking. We have a company here that creates Black Flag Roach Motels “Roaches Check In But They Don’t Check Out.” I would only worry if those festooned in black organize under the black flag with skull and crossbones. I’ve always wondered why clergy, nuns, etc. wear black and I think it is to instill fear. I did buy an Arcteryx black ski jacket this winter and I feel a little sinister when wearing it. Here is a little study done on “black”:

I remember that in the 1978 the Vancouver Canucks paid a psychologist
$100 000 or something to help them design their new uniforms. The road jerseys were mostly black for that very reason. Very ugly uniforms.

My totally unscientific simplification of a complex phenomenon is that industrial civilization has become a death cult. We are losing what will we had to struggle to survive against all the usual threats but especially against the behemoths now arrayed against us. It’s deep melancholia manifested in the surface. So we self-consciously mark ourselves via tattoos, piercings, and overtly militaristic and criminal garb as nihilists who no longer care and have no self-respect. It’s a vibe, an undercurrent, but we’re channeling the Punk sensibility of the 1970s, which basically observed that we’re fucked no matter what we do, so, you know, fuck it.

“Paint it Black” – my favorite Rolling Stones song.
I read in the rags that Mick Jagger’s wife (live-in girlfriend) committed suicide recently. I’ve never had thoughts of suicide, but I have had some strange dreams these days. We have a Betta fish and I dreamt last night that there was something wrong with the fish. I went to the aquarium and the entire tail end of the fish had been eaten away by these little white wormy leaches which were still attached to the fish. The parasites had fed right down to the peritoneal membrane of the fish and I could see the organs and vessels pumping and working behind the thin visceral wall. I pulled the tiny leaches off the fish with my bare hands and the fish was still alive.
They say that dreams are a metaphor for things in your life; I’m still thinking about what this dream means.

Of the 7 people I have had had major interaction with so far today, 5 were dressed predominantly in black; two are now seriously considering the matter, and one of them visited CoIC for the first time when I pointed out its importance.

Will We Demand the Inexpensive Fix Which Will Prevent Armageddon … Or Stay Distracted By Over-Blown Dangers and Ignore The Thing Most Likely To Actually Get Us?

The Most Likely Armageddon Threat … Preventable for a Small Amount of Money

Well-known physicist Michio Kaku and other members of the American Physical Society asked Congress to appropriate $100 million to harden the country’s electrical grid against solar flares. As shown below, such an event is actually the most likely Armageddon-type event faced by humanity.

Congress refused.

Kaku explains that a solar flare like the one that hit the U.S. in 1859 would – in the current era of nuclear power and electric refrigeration – cause widespread destruction and chaos.

Not only could such a flare bring on hundreds of Fukushima-type accidents, but it could well cause food riots globally.

Kaku explains that relief came in for people hit by disasters like Katrina or Sandy from the “outside”. But a large solar flare could knock out a lot of the power nationwide. So – as people’s food spoils due to lack of refrigeration – emergency workers from other areas would be too preoccupied with their own local crisis to help. There would, in short, be no “cavalry” to the rescue in much of the country.

In fact, NASA scientists are predicting that a solar storm will knock out most of the electrical power grid in many countries worldwide, perhaps for months. See this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

News Corp Australia noted in February:

A 2009 study by the National Academy of Sciences warned that a massive geomagnetic assault on satellites and interconnected power grids could result in a blackout from which the nation may need four to 10 years to recover.

***

In May 2012, a US Geological Survey report estimated a 6 percent chance of another Carrington event [referring to the solar flare of 1859 which was so strong that telegraph lines, towers and stations caught on fire at a number of locations around the world, and sparks showered from telegraph machines] occurring in the next decade.

***

But we do not know whether or not the Carrington event was as bad as sunstorms get.

[University of Kansas physicist Adrian ] Melott proposed that material from a solar megaflare 10 times the strength of the Carrington kind bombarded this planet around the year 775.

This is not just a theoretical fear: the Earth has narrowly missed being crisped by a large solar flare several times in the last couple of years. For example, the Los Angeles Times reported last month:

Earth barely missed the “perfect solar storm” that could have smashed into our magnetic field and wreaked havoc with our satellite systems, electronics and power systems, potentially causing trillions of dollars in damage, according to data from NASA’s STEREO-A spacecraft.

***

If the solar onslaught had occurred just nine days earlier, it would have rivaled the 1859 Carrington event …

“Observations of such a solar superstorm during a very weak solar cycle indicate that extreme events are not as infrequent as we imagine,” the authors wrote.
[read the rest]

Findings from this wheat field-test study, led by a UC Davis plant scientist, will be reported in the journal Nature Climate Change.

“Food quality is declining under the rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide that we are experiencing,” said lead author Arnold Bloom, a professor in the Department of Plant Sciences.

“Several explanations for this decline have been put forward, but this is the first study to demonstrate that elevated carbon dioxide inhibits the conversion of nitrate into protein in a field-grown crop,” he said.

The assimilation, or processing, of nitrogen plays a key role in the plant’s growth and productivity. In food crops, it is especially important because plants use nitrogen to produce the proteins that are vital for human nutrition. Wheat, in particular, provides nearly one-fourth of all protein in the global human diet.

Downgraded to 4,This is the wettest part of the whole continent [metres per annum]. When living at 30 S, we had a phrase for cyclones: Queensland weather. It crosses the coast in about an hour.Live in the Tropics,deal with the tropics.

The decrease in crop quality from CO2 is a prediction for ever-increasing levels. Crop quality and yield, and vulnerability to insects and fungus, are ALREADY signficantly impacted by air pollution – look at the sweet potatos in this photo. Left, filtered, clean air, center ambient (polluted) air, right, extra ozone fumigation:

Guy McPherson’s message is a good one — that we should treat each other with decency and respect as we should have all along rather than grubbing for the last dollar.

The proponents of industrial civilization would be wise to abandon their arrogance and invincibility and replace it with humility and introspection. Open your eyes and look at the signs. The future doesn’t need us.

Capitalist carbon man employed many methods to destroy the habitability of Earth, but his primary tool was the combustion of fossil fuels which pumped astronomical amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere at a rate a million times faster than Earth’s slow-moving carbon cycle naturally sequestered it. The lag time and exponential nature of anthropogenic climate change meant that by the time collapse of the biosphere became blatantly obvious to even the most obtuse observer, it was already well past the point of no return. The methane genie had long since escaped from its bottle, and ancient microbes which held the power to transform the entire planet had come out to play. Geologic history was repeating itself, and this time humans in their megacities were the volcanoes igniting what would become known as the Anthropocene Thermal Maximum.

Just one problem there, Mike. What humans are doing to the planet will result in such runaway temperature rise there probably won’t be a thermal maximum that anyone will survive. Mis-paraphrasing Lily Tomlin, after it gets hotter, it gets hotter, after which it gets hotter.

I could be wrong, of course; just waiting for someone to demonstrate I am.

When Guy McPherson raised that particular specter, I just about fell into (through?) the rabbit hole in madness and despair. As I understand it, he has backed away from promoting belief in such an eventuality, and I have decided the possibility lies too far outside my field of concern to give it any more attention, like the sun going supernova one day.

He goes through all two dozen or so of McPherson’s climate positive feedback loops and concludes that Guy doesn’t have the first clue what he is talking about.

The authors position, as best as I can tell, can be roughly paraphrased as:

“Yes, we are totally screwed, we have completely effed up the environment, undoubtedly that is a human tragedy of biblical proportions, but this whole Near Term Extinction thing? Nope, my dispassionate, quantitative, and scientific mind is not buying it, not one bit of it. Not least because I think McPherson and his ilk are a bunch of alarmist unpublished wankers who don’t deserve the title of ACADEMIC”

‘I think I am on solid ground as an electrical engineer when I say that this claim is not just wrong, but it is meaningless, just as meaningless as Curry’s baffled confusion of measurement uncertainty with hypothesis certainty. It isn’t true. It’s not even false. It means nothing.

To the extent that feedback is a useful model, feedbacks are additive, not multiplicative. They can’t be multiplicative.’

In my experience engineers are just about the worst people on the planet because their whole philosophy centred on the faux notion that everything has an engineering solution. And they tend to look down on chemists, biologists etc. How can a test tube or a microscope compare with damming a raging river or building a tunnel from England to France?

That said, Guy does occasionally say things I disagree with, and sometimes things that are just plain wrong -totalling maybe about 5% of the time. The 95% he gets right encourages me to overlook the few things he gets wrong. (I listened to a recording of a presentation I made recently without notes and found two minor spoken errors; easily done.)

When it comes to feedbacks, they can be (and usually are) self-reinforcing and mutually-reinforcing,/b>.

Guy quotes UNIPCC when he says ‘non-linear’. That is correct.

Engineers tend to think very linearly, and very anti-ecologically, which is why we have such a fucked-up planet.

“There’s gold in them thar hills.”

“Okay, let’s blow up the hills, divert the nearest stream, extract the gold, and sell it to pay for development. A railway line would be a good start.”

Why so emotional Jerry? Why get upset and lash out at people about something you do not think can happen. Worried about people hearing Guy and panicking? Hardly anyone is listening. I see plenty of people over at NBL who do not agree with NTE or like me are reserving judgement. One thing I have noticed about people like Tobis and the wizard Greer is they spend a awful lot of time in their comment sections managing the flock and the flockers love the personal attention. Jerry, if you find McPherson’s message upsetting, don’t worry-it will soon be over. As the world continues to unravel people will migrate from worrying about near term extinction to worrying about near term survival.

It’s really quite funny the vitriol that he provokes. People can’t stand the idea that it’s too late, we’re screwed. The members of GWFOYesterday on FB, and Tobis doth protest too much – if they really think he’s full of shit, why not just ignore him? The argument that his message will discourage people from acting is so ludicrous – 1. his audience is miniscule and 2. nobody is doing anything to lower emissions anyway – they are going UP and UP!

There seems to be some confusion, I was paraphrasing the author NOT offering my own opinion. Just for the record, I personally do not have an “emotional” reaction to the topic of NTE, I simply don’t know enough about it to have an informed opinion one way or another. There are too many “known unknowns and unknown unknowns”, so to speak.

That said, I do admire Guy McPherson’s work. Tobis on the other hand, well, as Mike said the article was so horribly written it’s not really worth the effort.

Mike: i’m respectfully asking that you please re-instate ulvfugl from banishment. Besides being a bit hard to take at times, he has offered many interesting and thought-provoking links and opinions, and I’m sure he contributed to the posts here. You can remove him again if needed, but permanent shunning for one difference of opinion seems a little harsh. It’s your call, but maybe a “three strikes and you’re out” for good rule could be implemented. Yours is one of the best blogs on the net and he is a good ally. Thanks for your consideration.

This Interactive Map of Earth’s Weather Is the Most Stunning Thing on the Internet

The current season has been harsh for many: Freezing temperatures and heavy snowfall in the U.S., wild storms and flooding in Europe and blazing heat and bushfires in Australia. It can be hard to appreciate the wonderful intricacies of Earth’s weather systems while they’re causing you to suffer. But this stunning visualization may change your perspective. Created by programmer Cameron Beccario, the data comes in every three hours from the supercomputers of the Global Forecast System, the same number crunchers that provide our news weather forecasts each night.

The most stunning aspect of the interactive is its detail. You can change the altitude to look at winds in different layers of the atmosphere. Clicking on the “Earth” button will present a feast of options for showing different map projections or data overlays. In addition to wind, you can look at ocean currents, temperature, humidity, air density and more. You can also change the time to examine extreme past weather events like Superstorm Sandy, or go forward to look at future forecasts.
[check it out]

The ghosts of record Pacific Ocean heat content may well be coming back to haunt us…

Very powerful near Category 5 ITA is now bearing down on the Australian Coastline. Regions near where the center makes landfall, projected to be near Cape Flattery, could experience 155 mph sustained winds with gusts in excess of 185 mph and storm surges in excess of 25 feet. Interests throughout North Queensland should remain abreast of what is a very powerful and dangerous storm capable of producing record or near record effects.

(For reference, a category 5 storm has a wind speed intensity of 156 mph or greater.)

An outrider of an El Nino pattern that appears to be gradually emerging and strengthening in the Tropical Pacific, ITA had her stormy beginnings near the archipelago of the Solomon Islands. There, what at first started as a tropical disturbance dumped three days of torrential rainfall over the island chain, setting off worst-ever floods on record, washing away hundreds of buildings, and leaving more than 50,000 people homeless.

Major rainfall events are not uncommon in the Solomons. But what occurred as a result of current and abnormally intense heat-spurred Pacific Ocean convection is. For the massive shield of thunderstorms that spawned ITA also dumped one meter (1000 mm or 39.4 inches) of rainfall during a three day period over some sections of this tropical island chain. The far-reaching floods ruined roads, bridges, buildings and forced the cessation of strip mining operations in interior sections. [read the rest]

The pipeline of natural gas to Ukraine and Europe is on the verge of shutdown this morning. Putin sent letters to 18 countries demanding upfront payment for gas as Ukraine refuses to pay the price Russia wants.

In a letter sent to European leaders and seen by the Financial Times on Thursday, the Russian president said that Gazprom had a contractual right to force Ukraine to pay in advance for gas supplies and in the event of further violation of the conditions of payment “will completely or partially cease gas deliveries”.

The letter is the first time Moscow has so clearly threatened to cut gas supplies to Ukraine, a key transit route for 15 per cent of European gas consumption. It marks an escalation of economic pressure on Ukraine at a time when Kiev’s new government is already struggling to defuse a stand-off with armed pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east.

Gazprom and Ukraine have been involved in an increasingly hostile dispute in recent weeks, with the state-controlled Russian company nearly doubling the price of gas for Ukraine, a move described by Arseniy Yatseniuk, the country’s acting prime minister, as “a plan to pressure and grab Ukraine through gas and economic aggression”.

Ukraine says it will not accept the newly announced price of $485 per thousand cubic metres, while Gazprom insists that Ukraine pay off its debt.

Putin blamed European countries for Ukraine’s economic turmoil, saying that EU member states had contributed to the country’s trade deficit, while Russia had subsidised the Ukrainian economy by $35bn in the past four years through lower gas prices and unpaid fines.

Note: Not all that far from Yellowstone. Did you know that Yellowstone’s Old Faithful live webcam has been down for two days now and is entering a third straight day of being down? As far as I know, that has never happened before. And did you know the US government is seeking large numbers of buses for evacuation of the general population in the continental United States?

Quote: “This is a solicitation for a single indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract to obtain evacuation planning and operational support to facilitate a motor coach evacuation of the general population in response to Presidential-Declared Emergencies and Major Disasters within the continental United States.”

Note: Worth paying attention to this stuff, especially if you live within, say, 500 miles of Yellowstone. Don’t expect to get any warning. If Yellowstone erupts big and you live within a few hundred miles then you’ll hear it and then you’ll have a short window of time to GTFO, or wait for a GTFO Bus, or you could be buried under ash. It wouldn’t be worth staying around. Everything would die, all the buildings would collapse, no sewer, no running water, no roads, no natural gas for heat, no electrical grid, not even solar power – or not much anyway – because the sky would be darkened. Maybe it won’t erupt, or maybe if it does it won’t be a big eruption, but the signs are looking increasingly ominous, especially when viewed in the context of all the OTHER volcanoes erupting around the world. Stay alert, hope for the best…but prepare for the worst.

“WHAT TO TAKE AWAY FROM THIS NEWS
1) The ground inside the gigantic mouth of the Yellowstone Super Volcano is rising and moving southeastward.
2) Helium -4, not normally present, has suddenly appeared at Yellowstone in unbelievably large amounts never seen before.
3) When Helium -4 was seen at other volcanoes, it appeared shortly before major eruptions of those volcanoes.
4) Prior to most volcanic eruptions, earthquakes occur near the volcano and just this past week, a Magnitude 3.5 earthquake occurred close to Yellowstone crater, on 11 February.”

About 25 years ago I recall a friend talking about a scientist with a fringe theory about sudden climate change. From what I recollect, the take-away was, in the past, earth had experienced catastrophic climate warming in as little as 10 years. (Sorry, I don’t recall the name of the author.)

“A microbe that spewed humongous amounts of methane into Earth’s atmosphere triggered a global catastrophe 252 million years ago that wiped out upwards of 90 percent of marine species and 70 percent of land vertebrates.”

“The implicated microbe, Methanosarcina, is a member of a kingdom of single-celled organisms distinct from bacteria called archaea that lack a nucleus and other usual cell structures.”

Now look at this NATURE study about rapid colonization by methangens of our rapidly thawing peat/permafrost:

“Thawing permafrost promotes microbial degradation of cryo-sequestered and new carbon leading to the biogenic production of methane, creating a positive feedback to climate change. Here we determine microbial community composition along a permafrost thaw gradient in northern Sweden. Partially thawed sites were frequently dominated by a single archaeal phylotype, Candidatus ‘Methanoflorens stordalenmirensis’ gen. nov. sp. nov., belonging to the uncultivated lineage ‘Rice Cluster II’ (Candidatus ‘Methanoflorentaceae’ fam. nov.). Metagenomic sequencing led to the recovery of its near-complete genome, revealing the genes necessary for hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis. These genes are highly expressed and methane carbon isotope data are consistent with hydrogenotrophic production of methane in the partially thawed site. In addition to permafrost wetlands, ‘Methanoflorentaceae’ are widespread in high methane-flux habitats suggesting that this lineage is both prevalent and a major contributor to global methane production. In thawing permafrost, Candidatus ‘M. stordalenmirensis’ appears to be a key mediator of methane-based positive feedback to climate warming.”

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-hoooooooooooooooooo, major Kong rides again, “HI THERE!”, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Methanogens. Could you pass that shaker of bacteriophages, please. There’s only one thing to do, concentrate on increasing GDP. Maybe Lovelock was right, live in biodomes, except their won’t be any for 99.99999% of the human population. Don’t worry, Noah’s Ark II will be blasting off to Mars in a last ditch effort to save mankind and as a consolation to those unable to make the trip, God loves you, yes he does. I’ve pretty much reached the same conclusions as McPherson except the part about treating each other with respect and compassion. What are all the f’ers doing right now, checking their portfolios, buying gold, finding some way to stake down their middle-class prey for easy hunting in game farm America?

Haha. Also dramatically increased is not only power lines breaking from trees and branches falling on them, but people being injured and killed, cars and buildings being crushed. When I was growing up I never heard of any of those things happening other than a direct lightening hit, and now all are commonplace. It’s because the trees are rotting inside from absorbing pollution, see: http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/01/29/whispers-from-the-ghosting-trees/

by TOM VITALE

April 05, 2014 7:36 AM ETEditor’s note: Peter Matthiessen died Saturday, shortly after this story published and just days before this latest novel, In Paradise, is due to be released.

At age 86, Peter Matthiessen has written what he says “may be his last word” — a novel due out Tuesday about a visit to a Nazi extermination camp. It’s called In Paradise, and it caps a career spanning six decades and 33 books.

Matthiessen is the only writer to ever win a National Book Award in both fiction — for his last book, Shadow Country, and adult nonfiction for his 1978 travel journal, The Snow Leopard.

Matthiessen is filled with the vitality of past adventures as he leads a tour of his country-style home on the East End of Long Island. I visited him in March, on the day before he was to begin a round of experimental chemotherapy for cancer.

On the living room wall are a dozen large black-and-white photographs of New Guinea tribal warriors. The pictures were taken in 1961 — half by the author, the others by his traveling companion, Michael Rockefeller, who disappeared on that expedition, and may have been the victim of cannibals. Matthiessen wrote a book about that journey called Under the Mountain Wall — one of his many nonfiction chronicles of man and his relation to the natural world.

His new novel, In Paradise, is based on a different kind of journey — a trek into the Heart of Darkness. In 1996, Matthiessen, who is a Zen Buddhist, traveled to Poland on a meditation retreat. It took place at the former Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz. What he saw floored him — he recalls the barbed wire, the watch towers, and the crematoriums.

“The gas chambers were all blown up at the end of the war, so they are simply these grim-looking pale ruins out in the distance,” he says. “It’s a very grim scene. And so it’s the enormity of it that just stuns you the first time.”

Matthiessen tried to capture that experience in a book of journals, but he says the writing was flat. So he cast the story as a novel. The hero of In Paradise was born in Poland to a Jewish mother, but taken to America as an infant and baptized. Now, with a faded photo in his pocket, he is returning — 50 years later — to search for his mother in the place where she may have perished:

In this empty place then, at the end of autumn, 1996, what was left to be illuminated? What could the witness of warm, well-fed visitors possibly signify? How could such “witness” matter, and to whom? No one was listening.

McKay Jenkins is editor of The Peter Matthiessen Reader and has also done research at a concentration camp in Austria. “The way he articulates the rage, the despair, the existential delirium when you’re in a place like this was precisely what I felt,” Jenkins says.”… What he does in this book is that he captures the incredible brokenness that one experiences at this place,” Jenkins says. “[Matthiessen’s phrase ] ‘broken-brained and wholly broken-hearted’ is precisely the way one feels.”

With In Paradise, Matthiessen’s career has come full circle — from writing about the extinction of animals in his early nonfiction, to writing about the extinction of man. “Man has been a murderer forever,” he writes.

“The number of people killed in the past century — human beings killing each other is phenomenal, you know?” Matthiessen says. “How has civilization — so called — come this far and people are still designing tools to kill each other? For no other purpose than killing. Why are we doing it? Why are we doing it?”

Matthiessen says he wants the readers of In Paradise to consider the potential for evil in all of us.

Thanks for the thought. NZ is a long way from Australia, and the storms that hit northern Australia never head this way. NZ is vulnerable to strong southerlies bringing freezing cold air, mostly affecting the South Island and high ground on the North Island, and tropical storms originating in the Fuji region that clobber Northland, Auckland, Coromandel and Bay of Plenty (there’s a thought, in this resource depleted world! My, how it has changed since 1769).

Actually, the weather has been remarkably settled for a long time, leading to drought. Significant rain in the past week has got us off the hook for the moment..

Nevertheless, I have a sense of foreboding, knowing that ocean temperatures are creeping up, and the long-established climatic conditions that provided relative stability throughout the world have been disrupted. As Jennifer Francis, Paul Beckwith and others have pointed out, the great heat transfer systems of the Earth have been drastically altered by changes in the Arctic and we are now in uncharted territory. The postulation that excessive heat in the north pushes the major portions of the heat engine southwards is entirely plausible and perfectly logical.

Although climate is a great threat, the maniacal behaviour and policies of most governments, particularly western governments, seems to pose an even greater threat in the short term. Just what do those maniacs hope to achieve by pushing Russia and China into defending themselves militarily? Just what does the NZ government hope to achieve by opening up conservation land to mining and drilling? Just what do they hope to achieve by promoting the sucking up of the sea bed, magnetic separation and discharge of the dross back into the sea in prime fishing zones? Keeping the Ponzi scheme going for a few more years?

And then there’s Canada, being looted and despoiled at a rate even faster than NZ and pushing the entire planet ever faster into climate chaos..

Children growing up in severely disadvantaged circumstances can experience drastic chromosome ageing. By the time they are 9 years old their telomeres – the caps on the ends of chromosomes that shrink each time cells divide – can be as short as those of someone decades older. And a particular combination of genes seems to make children flourish in nurturing environments but suffer in harsh environments.

Daniel Notterman from Penn State University in University Park and colleagues found the effect in a group of 40 9-year-old boys, half of whom were from extremely harsh backgrounds and half from privileged ones.

Telomeres protect chromosomes from damage, so their shortening over time is thought to be responsible for some of the negative effects of ageing.

Children whose mothers had changed partners more than once by the time they were 9 had telomeres 40 per cent shorter than those whose mothers didn’t change relationships. And those with mothers who’d gone to college had 35 per cent longer telomeres than those who didn’t, on average. They also found shorter telomeres were associated with harsh parenting and younger mothers.

Mike, how can the Earth not be rendered uninhabitable for humans when everything the vast majority of humans do pushes the Earth towards uninhabitablity and ‘no one’ is interested in changing their ways?

Here is an anecdote from yesterday evening. I met gentleman from out of town who shared the following: a person he does work for is involved in felling trees, and is making a huge amount of money from doing so (China will buy almost anything thee days). He mentioned that this particular person was concerned about cash flow because he was running out of trees to fell, and plantings would not be available for another 40 years. So he is looking for plantations to buy or clear. This is going on in ‘clean green New Zealand’. It confirms the recent trend of NZ being deforested faster than land is being reforested,, leading to a reduction in the number of trees in the country. At the same time, the population continues to rise.

NZ used to be known as the land of sheep, with around 20 sheep for every human. Over the past 30 years sheep numbers have declined toward half of the peak number. But the dairy cattle population has doubled.

A big difference between sheep farming and dairy farming is that sheep roam the land, being herded for shearing a couple of times a year. Dairy cows are herded into milking units once or twice a day, and the ‘white gold’ extracted from them is transported long distances using diesel-powered vehicles. Since there is so much money to be made in the short term from dairying, cattle numbers continue to rise, and all the problems associated with dairying get worse.

A few years ago huge storage facilities were constructed at the port to facilitate the importation of palm kernel, to be fed to cows. Now the big projects ‘everyone is talking about’ are new bridges and additional roading to ease the flow of trucks to and from the port (and to make it easier for town folk to get to and from the out-of-town shopping complex). The NZ government is encouraging fracking and drilling ‘everywhere’ as a vital ingredient for maintaining this bizarre set of economic arrangements.

Having been introduced to the term sacrifice zone, I now think of Taranaki as a sacrifice zone, which is particularly bizarre because another major component of government and local government thinking is tourism, one of the most anti-ecological activities known. The next hotel complex is underway, fortunately on an asphalt-covered abandoned depot as opposed to a piece of prime productive land.

If it were not worse practically everywhere else on this planet I would cut my losses and run.

With respect to the there being no survivors to witness the ATM you postulate, I can only repeat what others have said. We are at 400ppm CO2, a level not experienced ever before by any humans or close relative of humans, and the CO2 content of the air is rising at an ever faster rate. The various thermal lag factors suggest even if we stopped industrial activity tomorrow the Earth would continue to warm for many decades, promoting dozens of positive feedbacks and perhaps triggering new ones. Peter Wasdell pointed out about 5 years ago that all the feedbacks are positive; there are no negative feedbacks, just thermal radiation equilibrium to stabilise temperature . We are at approximately 287K, and 297k is not significantly different in terms of physics but is hugely significant in terms of ecology, the point that Guy McPherson keeps hammering. .

!5 years ago I used the word doomed.to describe humanity if nothing was done to drastically curtail emissions. Over the past 15 years nothing has been done to curtail emissions, and practically all central and local government policy is geared to increasing them. Everywhere.

When fossil fuels become generally unavailable, people will start to burn whatever comes to hand, especially wood, the point I made in the ‘Henrietta’ video.

Where do I disagree with you? Capitalist industrial civilization will continue on its trajectory until it cannot. There will be a maximum global average temperature that will be reached and nothing prevents us right now from naming it the Anthropocene Thermal Maximum (ATM cha-ching) which could will last for tens of thousands of years or much, much longer depending on how much damage we’re able to ‘get in’ before we expire. However, for every last one to die, we’d have to make the poles uninhabitable as well and I don’t think that’s a done deal yet.

‘However, for every last one to die, we’d have to make the poles uninhabitable as well and I don’t think that’s a done deal yet.’

That’s where we disagree, Mike. I say that once 3/4 of the world becomes uninhabitable it all become uninhabitable, even if the temperatures as such remain in the ‘habitable range’, because no one will be able to survive in region that has close to six months of near-complete darkness for very long. Dinosaurs that evolved to live in what is now northern Canada were tiny compared to their hot-climate cousins. And they had thousands of years to become suitably adapted.

Even if plants could stand the extreme temperatures commensurate with near-continuous night followed by near-continuous day, they would not obtain sufficient light energy to carry out photosynthesis on a scale required to support a population of mammals. Reptiles, maybe. But not mammals, and especially nit non-hibernating animals which require a relatively huge daily intake of kiloJoules.

(Remember the Sun reaches an zenith of just 23 degrees above the horizon at the South Pole.)

It could be argued that tiny dinosaurs that lived in what is now northern Canada were able to overcome the long winter problem by migrating south in the winter and north in the summer.

However, if we are talking about the poles, there is no land mass at the North Pole, so we are talking exclusively about the South Pole. That poses a major problem because in recent geological times Antarctica has not been connected to any land mass, and the tenuous links to Chile will be more impassable than ever as sea levels rise.

Back in 2004 Sir David King,scientific advisor to the UK government, said that Antarctica could literally become the only inhabitable land mass if climate change was not dealt with. At the time I agreed because I didn’t really think it through. Now I have.

The reason I say it almost certainly a done deal is that ‘we’ have known about all this stuff for 40 years, and I have personally presented all this stuff to government after government and council after council for 15 years, and ‘we’ are further from doing anything about it than ever. As discussed many times, all official policy is permanently geared to making everything worse as fast as possible.

One just need look at the preposterous NPDC ‘plan for the next decade’, which is little short of utter drivel, to recognise that.

Help! Someone please demonstrate that I am wrong somewhere in the above analysis.

P.S.

The fact that no one is listening at government and council level doe not deter me from making one last attempt to challenge the insanity in the tiny window of opportunity that still exists. hence I am up to my neck in writing and collating and posts here are hurried.

According to the article they are producing a “tiny” amount of food, not nearly enough to feed their population, never mind hordes of starving refugees – and that is WITH access to all the modern technology and energy they can bring to bear to agriculture, all of which is going to go away due to economic collapse and peak oil. There is nothing in that article to indicate the area can be self-sufficient NOW, never mind in a turbulent future which may quite possibly not include any rain.

Hey Mike I saw this great gadget today and since you are good at software I though maybe you could make one just like it only instead of new age mumbo-jumbo it could be anti-capitalist mumbo-jumbo? http://sebpearce.com/bullshit/

Then I could generate new comments to post here and you would like them better!

The Inuit have managed for a very long time with even less resources. You’ll have to explain why that is not so to convince me of total 100% human extinction and your software device won’t help you with that. (Didn’t get the joke if there was one intended.)

Sure Mike. That’s easy. The Inuit (which had problems with overshoot and warfare historically) lived almost exclusively from hunting and fishing. The ocean is dying – from overfishing, pollution, warming and acidification. And the indigenous animals that live on ice and land are going to go extinct – they will not be able to adapt to vastly warmer conditions. So the Inuit don’t give any support to the idea that people will be able to survive there in the future. When civilization falls apart and there are no more deliveries to the grocery stores, people will eat every animal they can find until there are not left. Then they will eat the bugs and worms until there are none of those left.

Anyone who maintains uncertainty in the face of unimpeachable and overwhelming contrary evidence is also a fool.

I guess everyone has their personal threshold for completely coming to terms with the immediacy of the extinction event and how far along we already are into it… mine was seeing Gail’s trees and noticing the lack of bugs around the same time. No plants, no bugs = no humans. There’s not a lot to dicker over once you get the drift.

Completely understandable. However, it is difficult to go back to other issues. It just no longer matters to me what politicians (or governments, or companies) do or don’t do, a.) because it’s fairly predictable, and b.) because what they do or don’t do can no longer change the outcome.

The only thing to be done to maintain sanity is to cultivate non-attachment, is how I see it. I don’t do it according to any official philosophy, though.

But you were just saying that humans would be eating “bugs and worms until there are none of those left.”
I assume they’ll be turning to cannibalism after they eat every last bug and worm. Would that be the next step in your projection of the future?

Mike, you make it sound like cannibalism is an impossibility. Why is that?

I disagree with Gail only in that I think the bugs are already on their way out, along with the plants. Starting to dig in the garden and saw no worms, one grub, one wood louse, and one tiny millipede. Very few birds. No bird song, although it is a sunny spring day.. 60 degrees out in Central VT.

Last year I read a newspaper article about declines in bird population because of lack of insect food. It was just one of those things that gets reported and people gloss over. They think no insects is a good thing for the most part.

Mike – cannibalism is extremely common throughout human history. Certainly, it is going to occur more frequently as food becomes scarce.

I find there is value in discussing the future, even if I’m certain of the end. It is why terminal cancer patients join support groups. As new people are diagnosed, they look to others who have already walked that path. So it gives a sense of purpose and value to those who have already been in the group for a while.

Denying the obviousness of “The End” induces an assortment of mental/emotional problems, too.

Gail, I suffered mentally much more from around 2008 until 2012 when I found Guy’s site, because I truly thought I was going crazy. I mean seriously madhouse material. Because I could “see” this dire outcome and no one else could, or they were putting it way off hundreds if not thousands years into the future. While I’m still disturbed, and pass through many pockets of sadness each day, at least I don’t feel completely unhinged.

Exactly Lidia thank you. There have been times I think I’m crazy too, and then I just LOOK at the trees, and the dwindling animal population, and the very clear determination of humans to pursue business as usual, and it’s is very obvious where this trend will lead. If you haven’t seen “Call of Life” it is very well done although of course, it has the obligatory deluded hopium at the end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=891jvgSdnoU

So much gnashing of teeth, rending of clothing and general condemnation about our fellow man. But why all the angst? What made you so great, informed and aware? I’d wager every poster here was identified as an intelligent person long before they reached double digits. So, was it all your hard work before you were 10 years old or was it something more innate, as in, you were lucky to be born of your parents?

The bottom line is that this shit is just too complicated for the average person. I know that might sound preposterous on this board, because for anyone hanging around here, it’s all very obvious to the point of being a little bit boring & mundane. But for your avg sheep with an IQ of 100, that only just makes them marginally literate. That means, you might be capable of understanding that you ARE in fact signing a loan document, but you really don’t know what that loan document really IS.

Ditto for marketing and advertising. Instead of watching in amusement and deciphering the target audience they’re addressing, or looking for interesting tricks in photography, script, acting, etc – or simply becoming bored and flicking the channel – the vast majority are actually influenced by the message! I know, crazy, right? But it’s true, for if it wasn’t, the medium would cease to exist.

Ok, so perhaps I should get to my point: I think a lot of attention focused on the environment is misplaced is terms of what it means today. Worrying about climate change, or lamenting the inability for humankind to organize any rational response to these threats is somewhat irrelevant for two reasons:

(a) It’s merely a luxury of thought in an era of plenty – once the FF surplus buffer is gone, any talk of voluntary carbon reductions will simply attract a mob baying for **your** blood;
(b) It’s too far out – I don’t buy Guy’s short-term assessment, simply because unless it’s a direct asteroid hit, short-term in Earth time is measured in centuries.

But there is a very real threat today, in the here and now, and it’s the shark fin drop off from peak resources. However, it’s not merely the actual carbon short-fall (which, of course is in itself significant), but the second order effect it will have on global financing, specifically the dollar.

And this brings me back the beginning of this comment, which is 99 out of 100 people – or maybe 999 out of 1000 – have absolutely no fucking idea how the money system works. And it’s these clueless sheep who pose the real danger to YOU today, because when the current dollar hegemony begins to wobble even a little bit, the impact on price inflation is going to really put the squeeze on people. (Even more that that which is occurring right now.)

Which is why I suggest attempting to blend in; no one is going to be in the mood to listen to a smart aleck or looks like he’s some kind of smarty pants when the shit gets real. This is when the mob gets going, and you want to look like you fit right in as a fellow victim.

In this regard, I search for various subtle signals everyday that perhaps a certain person or residence has a clue, but generally keep the information to myself for future reference. This is the time to be building your own ‘security’ dossier that might come in useful not too far down the line.

“And you can go out there and protest; you can wave a sign; you can shout obscenities at the status quo or what have you and it will either be ignored or, if it causes sufficient embarrassment, the police are going to come and beat the living crap out of you. Or eventually you may be dragged from you bed at 3 a.m. and shot in the head and tumbled into an unmarked grave. This is the kind of thing that can happen, and it does happen all the time in the Third World. And this is something we can understand in our current situation where the modern industrial nations are becoming Third World countries. The Third World country is a country in the modern world that doesn’t have access to a lot of energy.”

The wizard is a very perceptive guy. I see signs of that in North America already. For example, the gutting of Environment Canada by the Harper gang was a effective strategy in silencing scientists whose research was causing “sufficient embarrassment”. It was not violent, but they are just getting started. Then there are the non violent environmental protesters who are being sent to prison. Could you imagine that 20 years ago? Just getting started. As the benign dog points out, when the dollar hegemony slips even further it won’t be just the government and the rich looking to silence the critics. Does anyone one here really think people like the neo-cons are going to give up the reserve currency status with out a fight?

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OWS knows who really pulls the strings

"...the megawealthy and Washington have become so symbiotic as to be a single entity. Indeed, Occupy's best move, as conservative blogger/financier Gregory Djerejian noted at TheAtlantic.com, was "directing their ire squarely toward the real elites of the country, rather than their bought-and-paid marionettes sitting in Washington."

Preserving the Status Quo

There is no right wing or left wing, only the aristocracy and the serfs (a vertical paradigm).
To know this is to be like a fish who has broken the surface of the water, realizing he was in water the whole time.

A Kabuki Play

"What we have, in what passes for US democracy in 2012, is a kabuki play that Cicero put to papyrus 1948 years earlier. All historical empires and war aggressors have used propaganda to claim their looting and police states were necessary and helpful to the 99%. Instead, a sorrowful history tells us they were almost always for the sole benefit of the 1%."
- Albert Bates